2025-02-13 15:31

Tags: landscape, rural, idealisation
Author, Title:

"We understand a stroll as a sequence, a chain
of pearls, on the basis of which an integrative
act takes place: the creation of a typical
landscape scenery. In its original form, this
act was however based on yet another pattern:
the transition from urban to rural."

2025-02-07 13:49

Tags: Ensemble protection, stadtbild, urbanism, place
Author, Title: Bernhard Schneider_Stadtbild und Verzweiflung

"Stadtbild war bis gegen 1900 sozusagen ein neutraler Begriff (Camillo Sitte). Das änderte sich, als es darum ging, die Innenstädte von Gross und Mittelstädten in grossem Stil den Geschäfts und Verkehrsbedürfnissen von Cities anzupassen und in erheblichen Teilen zu opfern. Dadurch, dass man versuchte, diese Einbrüche durch - in Fassaden wettbewerben ermittelte - ortstypische Bauten zu kaschieren, geriet der Begriff ins Zwielicht, verlor seine Unschuld und bald danach auch seine Suggestivkraft. Als es nach 1970 darum ging, denkmalpflegerische Anliegen in die Stadtplanung und vor allem in die Alltstadtsanierung einzubringen, musste ein neues Instrumentarium und Vokabular entwickelt werden, das - anders als der zu vage Bildbegriff - sowohl wissenschaftlichen als auch rechtlichen Anforderungen gerecht wurde. Begriffe wie Stadtdenkmal und Ensemble machten Karriere"

2025-02-06 11:49

Tags: heritage, protection, consumption, politics, class
Author, Title: Rem Koolhaas_Preservation is Overtaking Us

"The need for supplementation, that is to say for preservation, is enmeshed with the origin of any architectural project aspiring to cultural relevance. This is the crux and the urgency of his retreat into preservation: a search to comprehend the practice of architectural supplementation in order to sustain cultural significance."

Title: The Production of Heritage
Author: Alan Chandler, Michaela Pace
Year: 2020
Source: ETH Bibliothek

Tags: heritage, preservation

Title: The City is not a Post-Card
Author: Alberto Pérez-Gómez
Year: 2007
Source:

Tags: place, city, tourist, capitalism

Title: Die Stadt als Text
Author: Alessandro Carlini, Bernhard Schneider
Year: 1976
Source: ETH Bibliothek, Book "Konzept 2"

Tags: stadtbild, city, image, representation

2025-02-07 14:52

Tags: heimat, aesthetic, place, alienation
Author, Title: Dana Bönisch - Jil Runia - Hanna Zehschnetzler_Heimat revisited

"Their counterpart may no longer be the periphery; it is, instead, a desire for the vernacular, a new imagination of place. Such a view is borne out by historical chronology. The late nineteenth century, heyday of nation-state building and industrialization, saw a proliferation of Vernacular revivals.
It is clear, then, that the desire for Heimat emerges within the parameters of modernism. Architectural historians have often portrayed the vernacular revival around 1900 as a "springboard" for the development of modernism proper. Even traditional scholars such as Nicholas Pevsner acknowledged that the English and American Arts and Crafts movements in particular helped wipe away the aesthetic "clutter'' of historicist revival styles of the nineteenth century, and thus prepared the ground for modern functionalism. While the truth of such trajectories is beyond question, this volume proposes that they contain only a partial truth."

Title: Altartafel
Author: Hans Leu der Ältere
Year: 1500
Source: Wikimedia

Tags: zurich, bridge, infrastructure, medieval

Title: Altartafeln
Author: Hans Leu der Ältere
Year: 1450
Source: Wikipedia

Tags: representation, zurich, stadtbild, image, historic_city_center

Title: Wie kommt die Stadt ins Bild?
Author: Andreas Beyer
Year: 2008
Source:

Tags: stadtbild, heritage, preservation

Title: Antiquae Urbis Romae cum Regionibus Simulacrum
Author: Fabio Calvo
Year: 1527
Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Tags: gnomon, monument, heritage, tourist

Tags: switzerland, city, landmark, identity, heritage

The Act of Mediation in 1803 was a pivotal moment in Swiss history, abolishing the feudal system and transforming land into a tradable commodity. This shift fundamentally changed land ownership and usage, inviting speculation and development that altered the social and economic fabric of the region.

As a result, the city—still often encircled by its ancient walls and characterized by streets designed for communal gathering rather than traffic—appeared increasingly powerless in the face of these rapid changes. It is therefore no surprise that the founding year of the “Antiquarische Gesellschaft Zürich” in 1832 coincided with the decision to demolish the city fortifications, marking a significant loss of a tangible symbol of the city’s political identity.

The removal of these physical boundaries necessitated new reference points to navigate the city’s expansion into uncharted territory. This transformation prompted a re-evaluation of urban identity and heritage, as the city sought to establish frameworks for understanding itself amidst modernization.

2025-02-07 10:52

Tags: aesthetic, heimat, public, education, class
Author, Title: Martin Viehhauser_Reformierung des Menschen durch Stadtraumgestaltung

"Die ästhetischen Grundzüge des Heimatstils wurden in den publizistischen Kanälen offensiv kommun ziert. Dazu zählten vor allem das publikationsorgan der SVH mit dem Titel Heimatschutz, ferner die Zeitschriften Die Schweizerische Baukunst, die zwischen 1909 und 1914 das Publikationsorgan des BSA war, und die Zeitschrift Das Werk, die ab 1914 vom SWB und BSA herausgegeben wurde."

Title: Denkmalpflege Theorie
Author: Archithese 11
Year: 1974
Source: e-periodica

Tags: heritage, preservation, protection

Title: Heim und Heimat
Author: Archithese
Year: 1979
Source:

Tags: [[03_tags/heimatschutz|03_tags/heimatschutz]], denkmalpflege, heimat

2025-02-07 11:58

Tags: material_culture, popular_memory, history, idealisation
Author, Title: Philip Ursprung_Unknown

"Auf die Frage, welches Material in Zürich dominiert, möchte Ich antworten. Asphalt. Asphalt überzieht den grössten Teil des Bodens. Er ist günstig, elastisch, vielseitg verwendbar - für Fussgänger wie für Autos. Er lässt sich leicht putzen. Er dämpft, ja er schluckt die Geräusche. Wasser und Schmutz scheint von ihm abzuperlen wie von einer Teflon Schicht. Er ist aber auch hermetisch und verdeckt ales, was unter ihm liegt mit einer viskosen, undurchdringlichen, anpassungsfähigen Folie. Asphalt ist emblematisch für Verdrängung und Opportunismus, für zwei typische Eigenschaften dieser Stadt also, wenn man so will. Wenn sich tatschlich einmal ein Riss in der Asphaltdecke zeigt, oder eine Baumwurzel die Asphaltdecke hebt, dann ist das Tiefbaudepartement umgehend zur Stelle und versiegelt die Lücke. Asphalt würde zwar schön altern, er würde ausbleichen wie eine Fotografie, an den Rändern zerkrümeln, aber soweit lässt es die Stadt nicht kommen. Alle zehn bis fünfzehn Jahre wird der Belag erneuert und die Spuren der Zeit werden wieder gelöscht."

2025-02-05 16:26

Tags: ethic, class, legislation, archive, discourse
Author, Title: Laurajane Smith_Uses of Heritage

"These principles have also become embedded in the Athens Charter for the Restoration of Historic Monuments of 1931, and the International Charter for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites (Venice Charter) of 1964, the first of a range of ICOMOS charters that continue to frame and define the debates about conservation and heritage management practices. European ideas about conservation, and the nature and meaning of monuments, have become internationally naturalized, so that these principles have become global ‘common sense’. Denis Byrne (1991) has argued, more critically, that they have become hegemonic and that the ‘conservation ethic’ has been imposed on non-Western nations."

Tags: monument, heritage, conservation, power, class

The Athens Charter of 1931 marked a defining moment in the understanding of heritage and monument conservation on an international level. As it unfolded, the charter emphasized that monuments were not mere remnants of the past but living symbols enmeshed in the modern world. These structures—whether houses, theaters, or arches—survived through a fusion of ancient craftsmanship and modern materials like metal, concrete, and asphalt, a reality that required acknowledgment. Their significance deepened with each political or cultural event, whether a leader’s visit or a state performance, signaling that these sites were more than just historical—they had become instruments in the politics of heritage and power.

Despite its focus on international cooperation, the Athens Charter was not without its limitations. The notion that states were “wardens of civilization” revealed a Eurocentric bias. The charter’s discussions on conservation often reflected colonial attitudes, where non-European monuments were framed in a way that excluded local populations from having agency over their own heritage.

These already mentioned principles became embedded in the Athens Charter for the Restoration of Historic Monuments of 1933, the first of a range of ICOMOS charters that continue to frame and define the debates about conservation and heritage management practices. European ideas about conservation, and the nature and meaning of monuments, have become internationally naturalized, so that these principles have become global ‘common sense’.

The seven points of the manifesto are:

to establish organizations for restoration advice.
to ensure projects are reviewed with knowledgeable criticism.
to establish national legislation to preserve historic sites.
to rebury excavations which were not to be restored.
to allow the use of modern techniques and materials in restoration work.
to place historical sites under custodial protection.
to protect the area surrounding historic sites.

Title: Walter Benjamin and Kitsch Politics in the Phantasmagorical Age
Author: Aysergül Ergül
Year: 2016
Source:

Tags: kitsch

Title: An der Fluchgasse
Author: Barbara Franzen, Andreas Z'graggen
Year: 2015
Source: ETH Baubibliothek

Tags: historic_city_center, zurich, market, trade

Title: Vom Raritäten Kabinett zur propriété nationale
Author: Benjamin Gygax
Year: 1998
Source:

Tags: transformation, collector, heritage, archive

Title: Stadtbild
Author: Bernd Roeck
Year: 2013
Source:

Tags: stadtbild

Title: Stadtbild und Verzweiflung
Author: Bernhard Schneider
Year: 1976
Source:

Tags:

Title: Bildersturm
Author: unknown
Year: 1524
Source: unknown

Tags: iconoclasm, vandalism, zurich, reformation

Title: Der Planet rebelliert
Author: Bruno Latour
Year: 2019
Source:

Tags: heimat, production, identity

Title: On a Possible Triangulation of Some Present Political Positions
Author: Bruno Latour
Year: 2018
Source:

Tags: alienation, climate, heimat, global

Tags: image historic_city_center, representation, zurich, ensemble, stadtbild

The preservationist motivations began to gain prominence, especially in the years leading up to World War II. While many early 20th-century projects proposed a near-total overhaul of the Old Town, by the 1930s, a shift in urban policy began to emerge, focusing on the aesthetic and historical value of the existing cityscape. This shift was influenced by a growing cultural movement that valued the symbolic and visual continuity of the city’s identity, rather than the preservation of its physical substance. Instead of protecting entire buildings or quarters, the focus was on maintaining the “image” or “character” of the Old Town. This approach often led to the selective demolition of old structures, replacing them with new buildings designed to blend in with their historical surroundings, thus creating a semblance of authenticity while accommodating modern needs.

This selective preservation was not driven purely by an interest in safeguarding heritage but was also a reaction to changing public sentiment and political pressures. The Old Town was increasingly seen as a key element of Zurich’s cultural and tourist identity, and there was growing recognition of the need to retain a connection to the past, albeit in a curated and controlled way. This led to the creation of “altstadtkonforme” new buildings that evoked traditional architectural styles without necessarily preserving the original structures or materials. Such projects aimed to balance the city’s modern functional needs with a vision of historical continuity.

The establishment of the “Büro für Altstadtsanierung” in 1946, under city architect Albert Heinrich Steiner, institutionalized this hybrid approach. Although the office sought to preserve the overall “Stadtbild” (cityscape), it continued to endorse significant alterations, demonstrating how the preservation of the “image” of the Old Town became a form of managed change. These projects were more about crafting a historically resonant urban narrative than about safeguarding the architectural integrity of the past.

Title: Campus Martius
Author: Giovanni Battista Piranesi
Year: 1762
Source:

Tags: cartography, heritage, monument

2025-02-13 15:19

Tags: society, preservation, picturesque
Author, Title: Wolfgang Scheppe_Die Legislative Erfindung des Stadtbildes

"Es war also nicht ohne Grund zunächst die vom Kohlestaub dunkel gewordenen Strasse- und Schauseiten, denen die Bemühungen um eine Aufwertung galten. Was das Viertel so wertvoll machte, war seine Bildhaftigkeit, das Pittoreske - und nicht die in ihm lebende Subkultur, zu deren letztem Reservat es geworden war. Der Marais figurierte als einzig verbliebene Bastion eben jener Verknüpfung von Architektur und Lebensform, die das Projekt des Präfekten Haussmann - eine polizeiliche Rationalität der Disziplinierung und Überwachung ästhetisch artikulierend unter Napoleon im angrenzenden Stadtgebiet ausgelöscht hatte."

Title: Zur Kritik der Stadtentwicklung
Author: Christian Schmid
Year: 1989
Source:

Tags:

2025-02-15 11:02

Tags: stadtbild, city, historic_city_center, monument, [[03_tags/ensemble|ensemble]], image
Author, Title: Bernd Roeck_Stadtbild

“Stadtbild war bis gegen 1900 sozusagen ein neutraler Begriff. Das änderte sich, als es darum ging, die Innenstädte von Gross und Mittelstädten in grossem Stil den Geschäfts und Verkehrsbedürfnissen von Cities anzupassen und in erheblichen Teilen zu opfern. Dadurch, dass man versuchte, diese Einbrüche durch - in Fassaden wettbewerben ermittelte - ortstypische Bauten zu kaschieren, geriet der Begriff ins Zwielicht, verlor seine Unschuld und bald danach auch seine Suggestivkraft. Als es nach 1970 darum ging, denkmalpflegerische Anliegen in die Stadtplanung und vor allem in die Alltstadtsanierung einzubringen, musste ein neues Instrumentarium und Vokabular entwickelt werden, das - anders als der zu vage Bildbegriff - sowohl wissenschaftlichen als auch rechtlichen Anforderungen gerecht wurde. Begriffe wie Stadtdenkmal und Ensemble machten Karriere.”

2025-02-05 16:47

Tags: class, monument, mundane, idealisation
Author, Title: Laurajane Smith_Uses of Heritage

"The idea of ‘preservation’ is interesting here, as the nineteenth century was a significant period of social change. The European conservation movement and the American preservation movement developed in the context of this change, and what is revealing is what it was that early conservationists and preservations sought to ‘save’ in this context. Almost inevitably it is the grand and great and ‘good’ that were chosen, to ‘remind’ the public about the values and sensibilities that should be saved or preserved as representative of patriotic American and European national identities. Even when it is the ‘bad’ that is being preserved, it is very often the exceptionally ‘tragic’ event that is commemorated, rather than unpleasantness that is more mundane or reflective of the general inequalities of human experiences. The very idea of monumentality – drawing on a sense of the inevitability and desirability of inheritance, of grand scale and of aesthetic taste – derives ultimately from ruling and upper middle class experience. "

2025-02-13 15:10

Tags: preservation, ethic, modernity
Author, Title: John Ruskin_The Seven Lamps of Architecture

"It is again no question of expediency or feeling whether we shall
preserve the buildings of past time or not. We have no right whatever
to touch them. They are not ours. They belong partly to those
who built them, and partly to all generations of mankind who are to
follow us."

2025-02-06 11:47

Tags: supplementation, authenticity,
Author, Title: Rem Koolhaas_Preservation is Overtaking Us

" A new design that is formally indistinguishable from its host context is the ultimate contextualist gesture, one in which the new does not just come in the shape of the old but rather arrives as a subtle and imperceptible supplement to it. OMA identified those elements of the old building that were deficient, such as the entrance and the view window, and supplemented them so that they would be able to withstand what was required of them."

2025-02-06 11:39

Tags: [[03_tags/nostalgia|03_tags/nostalgia]], future, heimat
Author, Title: Ryan Roark_The Afterlife of Dying Buildings

"Vital intervention is also a potentially powerful weapon against that immoral alternative, restoration. Ruskin’s moral railings against the dishonesty of restoration run the risk of seeming quaint today, especially given the widespread contemporary distaste for nostalgia, which is often considered to be anti-progress. Early twenty-first-century architectural theorist and historian Svetlana Boym tackled this conception of nostalgia in The Future of Nostalgia(2001). Boym distinguished between two types of nostalgia, restorative nostalgia, which seeks a return to a past state of glory, and reflective nostalgia, a creative and progressive impulse shared across humanity, a longing prompted by the fundamental unknowability of the past. She wrote: ‘Creative or reflective nostalgia reveals the fantasies of the age, and it is in those fantasies and potentialities that the future is born. One is nostalgic not for the past the way it was, but for the past the way it could have been. It is this past perfect that one strives to realize in the future’.30 It must be noted that Ruskin himself did not always avoid restorative nostalgia and sometimes actively yearned for the past. The elision between reflective and restorative nostalgia is in fact easy to make, and it is perhaps due to the difficulty of maintaining this distinction that many twentieth-century architects shied away altogether from nostalgia and charges of historicism."

Title: Heimat revisited
Author: Dana Bönisch - Jil Runia - Hanna Zehschnetzler
Year: 2020
Source:

Tags: heimat, modernity

Title: Paris, Capital of Modernity
Author: David Harvey
Year: 2003
Source:

Tags: manet, modernity, urbanism, public

Title: The History of Heritage
Author: David Harvey
Year: 2008
Source:

Tags: popular_memory, politics, class

Tags: vandalism, revolution, representation, monument, heritage

In a certain way, it is not surprising that preservation is related to revolution, because in a revolution, you have to decide what to destroy and what to keep. The first act of laws for the safeguarding of monuments was established two years after the French Revolution, while simultaneously introducing the term “vandalism.” In the context of heritage discourse, vandalism is not merely an act of destruction but often a deliberate statement that reflects political, social, or cultural ideologies.

During the French Revolution, acts of vandalism targeted symbols of feudalism and monarchy as part of a broader rejection of the ancien régime. The destruction of monuments associated with royal power and the Church was seen as a way to reject the past and create a new egalitarian culture. In this sense, vandalism was not random but rather an intentional and symbolic act aimed at erasing the remnants of a hierarchical society.

The destruction of monuments therefore prompted the creation of protective measures to safeguard national heritage. For example, Grégoire, a revolutionary figure, advocated against vandalism and sought to protect cultural artefacts and monuments from destruction. This classification of what is worthy of protection from inevitable destruction leads to the creation of an alibi for the destruction of artefacts deemed unworthy. This type of classification has far-reaching consequences to this day, as it continues to hinder the preservation of neighborhoods of “common people”.

The explosion of conservation discourse is therefore not to be seen as an antidote but as something deeply embedded in humanity’s capacity for destruction.

Tags: preservation, inventory, discourse, public

The “Denkmalpflege” is a cantonal institution that structures its tasks into four areas of work: Inventory, consulting, documentation and public relations. This institution is most often involved in building projects, as expert opinions are often required before a planning application can be submitted. The inventory refers to entire buildings or parts of buildings that are to be protected, listing buildings that are important witnesses to past eras due to their historical significance. These are referred to as monuments. Their long-term preservation is in the public interest. The compilation and regular updating of the inventory are laid down as a legal mandate in the Planning and Building Act.

The Planning and Building Act distinguishes between monuments of importance to the municipality (communal) and monuments of importance to the canton (supra-communal). For this reason, both the municipalities and the canton keep inventories. The building authority of the respective municipality is responsible for municipal monuments, while the cantonal monument preservation office is responsible for supra-municipal monuments.

2025-02-13 15:47

Tags: preservation, class, design, labour
Author, Title: Jorge Otero-Pailos_Experimental Preservation

"To teach care for the planetary commons does indeed require a new pedagogy. To state the obvious, architects are taught to care for what their clients pay for, as well as what they themselves are legally responsible for — which are the materials to be assembled into a building on a discrete plot of land. Architects are not paid to care, or insured to take responsibility for, anything outside the property line"

2025-02-05 16:51

Tags: renovation, historic_city_center, zurich,
Author, Title: Max Frisch_Cum Grano Salis

"Die Stadt unsrer Vorfahren schlichterdings niederzureissen, um Platz zu haben für unsere eigene Stadt, wäre verrückt; es gäbe einen Sturm der Empörung. In der Tat machen wir das Verrücktere: wir verpfuschen die Stadt unserer Vorfahren, ohne dafür einen neue zu bauen."

2025-02-07 13:45

Tags: stadtbild, denkmalpflege, aesthetic
Author, Title: Bernhard Schneider_Stadtbild und Verzweiflung

"Denn wo das Stadtbild als übergreifende Informationsstruktur interpretiert wird, entsteht zwischen dem Einzelobjekt und dem Stadtganzen ein dialektisches Verhältnis, in welchem dem einzelnen Gebäude sein Stellenwert quantitativ und - wie es sich zeigen wird - damit auch qualitativ zugemessen werden kann. Aus heutiger Sicht mag der Versuch, ästhetische Wahrnehmung und Wirkung messbar und damit beweisbar zu machen, noch dazu in einer Zeit, in der die gesellschaftliche Relevanz im Zentrum jeder wissenschaftlichen Auseinandersetzung stand, kurios erscheinen. Er entsprang jedoch dem ernsten Anliegen, auf der Ebene der Stadtbildpflege, die nicht mit dem Landesamt, sondern der Stadt oblag, denkmalpflegerische Ziele wissenschaftlich abzustützen - und blieb natürlich folgenlos.
Nicht gesagt wird, dass unter dem Vorwand, ein Vertrautes Bild zu erhalten, eben dieses zerstört wird - immer mit dem Ziel der Vergrösserung der Geschäftsflächen und der Rendite. "

2025-02-13 16:38

Tags: stadtbild, historic_city_center, urbanism, heimat
Author, Title: Melchior Fischli_Geplante Altstadt

"Dies gilt etwa für das Projekt, das
Karl Moser 1933 erarbeitete. Als Professor an der Eidgenössischen Technischen
Hochschule (ETH) und dann als Vorsitzender der Congrès internationaux pour l'architecture
moderne (CIAM) zu einem Gründervater der modernen Architektur in der Schweiz und
zur Bezugsfigur für die junge Generation unter den hiesigen Architekten geworden, legte
Moser Zeichnungen, Pläne und Fotomontagen vor, welche an der Stelle der Zürcher
Altstadt eine Zeilenbebauung mit modernen Geschäftshäusern zeigen. Die utopischen
Vorschläge, die Le Corbusier einige Jahre zuvor an Paris vorgeführt hatte, fanden damit
ihren Reflex an der Limmat. Mosers Projekt aber geriet in Vergessenheit, bis es in den
1970er Jahren zum architekturgeschichtlichen Sinnbild eines «imaginären Zürich» wurde;
jüngst war es wieder und sogar gleichzeitig im Zürcher Stadthaus und im Kunsthaus zu
sehen - einmal zusammen mit weiteren «verpassten» Projekten für die Stadt, im anderen
Fall mit dem OEuvre des Architekten.4
"

2025-02-13 16:41

Tags: picturesque, stadtbild, consumption, protection
Author, Title: Stanislaus von Moos_Erste Hilfe

"In Zürich sei die unbeschädigte Bebauung im Zentrum von Nachteil, argumentierte die gemeinderätliche Verkehrskommission 1956 ganz unkompliziert nach einer Studienreise durch Deutschland. Dort hätten die Bombardierungen breite Lücken gerissen, die wenigstens teilweise für Strassenverbreiterungen in Anspruch genommen werden können. Eine verbesserte Verkehrsführung im Bereich von Bahnhof, Bahnhofbrücke und Central war bereits beschlossene Sache gewesen, als 1948 die Liquidation der noch bestehenden Bauten im Limmatraum, insbesondere des Papierwerd Areals, an die Hand genommen wurde. Man schickte sich also an, den Kahlschlag, den anderswo die Bombardierungen verursacht hatten, gewissermassen als Trockenübung nachzuvollziehen. Ein Volksentscheid sorgte 1951 dafür, dass der Blick von der Bahnhofsbrücke zum Grossmünster und darüber hinaus bis in den Alpenraum schweifen konnte, und einige Jahre später wurde die Doktrin von der "Freien Limmat" durch den Abbruch der Fleischhalle aus dem 19. Jahrhundert zum fait accompli. Ein nicht unwesentlicher Aspekt der von Karl Moser 1933 vorgeschlagenen Niederdorfsanierung war damit realisiert."

2025-02-20 17:23

Tags: inventory, politics, preservation, legislation
Author, Title: Kantonale Denkmalpflege_Legislation

§ 6 KNHV
Die Inventare enthalten wenigstens folgende Angaben:
1. knappe Umschreibung und Wertung des Objektes
1. bestehende Schutzmassnahmen
3.Schutzzweck.
§ 7 KNHV
Für folgende Sachgebiete werden je separate Inventare erstellt:
1. Objekte des Naturschutzes
2. Objekte des Landschaftsschutzes
3. Objekte des Denkmalschutzes
4. Objekte der Archäologie
5. Objekte des Ortsbildschutzes
§ 204 PBG
1. Staat, Gemeinden sowie jene Körperschaften, Stiftungen und selbstständigen Anstalten des öffen tlichen und des privaten Rechts, die öffentliche Aufgaben erfüllen, haben in ihrer Tätigkeit dafür zu sorgen, dass Schutzobjekte geschont und, wo das öffentliche Interesse an diesen überwiegt, ung- eschmälert erhalten bleiben.
§ 213 PBG
1. Jeder Grundeigentümer ist jederzeit berechtigt, vom Gemeinwesen einen Entscheid über die Schutzwürdigkeit seines Grundstücks und über den Umfang allfälliger Schutzmassnahmen zu ver langen, wenn er ein aktuelles Interesse glaubhaft macht.
§ 211 PBG
1. Der Gemeinderat trifft die Schutzmassnahmen für Objekte von kommunaler Bedeutung.
§ 203 PBG
1. Schutzobjekte sind:
Ortskerne, Quartiere, Strassen und Plätze, Gebäudegruppen, Gebäude und Teile sowie Zugehör von solchen, die als wichtige Zeugen einer politischen, wirtschaftlichen, sozialen oder baukünstleri- schen Epoche erhaltenswürdig sind oder die Landschaften oder Siedlungen wesentlich mitprägen, samt der für ihre Wirkung wesentlichen Umgebung;
[…] wertvolle Park- und Gartenanlagen, Bäume, Baumbestände, Feldgehölze und Hecken; […]
Die Leitsätze zur Denkmalpflege in der Schweiz (Zürich 2007, S. 13), halten dazu fest:
1. «Der Mensch hat ein Grundbedürfnis nach Erinnerung. Sie stützt sich wesentlich auf Orte und Objekte.»
2. «Denkmäler sind ortsgebundene Objekte, die geschichtlichen Zeugniswert haben. Denkmäler können Zeugnisse jeglichen menschlichen Wirkens sein, historischer Ereignisse und Entwicklungen, künstlerischer Leistungen, sozialer Einrichtungen, technischer Errungenschaften.»
3. «Denkmäler sind bestimmt durch ihre überlieferte Materie; diese macht die Authentizität der Denkmäler aus.»

2025-02-14 09:25

Tags: value, care, maintenance, heritage
Author, Title: Georg Franck_Mentaler Kapitalismus

“Geben wir Acht auf das, worauf wir Wert legen, oder legen wir Wert auf das, worauf wir achten? Die Frage erinnert an jene nach Henne und Ei. Wertlegen kommt nicht ohne Achtgeben, Achtgeben nicht ohne Wertlegen vor. Alles Werten geht auf die angenehmen oder unangenehmen Gefühle zurück, die unser Achten färben. Und alles Achten ist, wie blaß und verschwommen auch immer, emotional gefärbt.”

Title: The Power of Place
Author: Dolores Hayden
Year: 1995
Source:

Tags:

2025-02-07 12:01

Tags: [[03_tags/ensemble|03_tags/ensemble]], speculation, protection, consumption
Author, Title: Gottlieb Loertscher_Denkmalpflege und Ortsbildschutz

"Die Einsicht indesen, dass der Schutz eines Baudenkmals fragwürdig leibt, wenn seine Umgebung nicht mit einbezogen wird, führte zur idee des Ensembleschutzes."

2025-02-06 11:57

Tags: preservation, authenticity, novelty
Author, Title: Jorge Otero-Pailos_Preservation is Overtaking Us

"Resistance to preservation takes the form of a conservative argument that insists on seeing the cultural deficiency of architectural form as a deviation from true architecture: Form should be the driver of cultural significance, and if it isn’t, then the problem lies with the culture itself. Such a conservative stance tolerates preservation but only under duress, as a necessary supplement. It only permits preservation to touch architecture as long as it remains secondary, even invisible, formless in order to better elevate architectural form as a “natural” object of cultural significance. Within this conservative logic, preservation becomes a self-effacing mode of supplementation meant to restore cultural significance to architecture by fundamentally transforming the public’s perception of buildings, without calling attention to itself. Preservation appears in the image of architecture, assuming its existing form."

2025-02-06 11:42

Tags: aesthetic, popular_memory, authenticity
Author, Title: Rem Koolhaas_Preservation is Overtaking Us

"Mikhailovskii’s view of leaving architecture unchanged did not translate into a conservation approach akin to what John Ruskin might have endorsed; he was perfectly comfortable substituting large portions of the material fabric in historic buildings with new in-kind substitutes, so long as they did not change the form of the building. The work of preservation had to aspire to formal self-effacement, or formlessness, vis-à-vis the work of architecture in order to be able to operate more freely at another level, that of cultural mediation."

2025-02-13 16:26

Tags: place, ritual, fortification
Author, Title: Kari Jormakka_Heimlich Manoeuvres

"Before the foundations rites, there is no human culture and no place for it. Rituals do not accept time and space as their context or bearer but rather cut continuous space into a templum and individuate time as a particulare tempus. The close connection between temporal and spatial separations was cleverly illustrated by Fabio calvo in his famous diagram of 1527 which represented augustan rome as a circular sun dial, divided by city gates into equal sectors, each with its own monument. As a place, rome is brought into existence by the establishment of the enclosure and the axially located gates and organized by triumphal arches and other monuments within the city. With the foundation of place, time commences; the roman calendar begins ab urbe condita. "

Tags: archaeology, objectivity, geolocation, cartography, restoration

Until the 18th century, the study of the past followed an antiquarian approach. The analysis of artefacts was driven by a desire for preservation, though this was often influenced by contemporary ideologies and aesthetic preferences. With the Enlightenment and the introduction of an archaeological mindset, research shifted from the seemingly subjective toward “objectivity.” Accurate representation without ideological or subjective bias became the primary goal, marking a transition to empiricism and scientific rigor. Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s Scenographia Campi Martii is a pivotal work in the discourse on heritage and preservation, offering a radical vision of Rome that intertwines destruction, restoration, and reconstruction into a single representation. Unlike the conventional preservation practices of his time, Piranesi does not depict Rome’s ruins as restored monuments, but rather presents them in their fragmented, decayed state, capturing the ruins as they appeared in his time. This approach challenges traditional restoration methods by focusing on the present condition of the ruins and using them as a basis for reimagining a new Rome. In doing so, Piranesi moves beyond a purely “scientific approach,” navigating a space
between restoration and imagination.

Title: The Invention of the Historic Monument
Author: Francoise Choay
Year: 2001
Source:

Tags: heritage, monument,

2025-02-13 15:12

Tags: capitalism, urbanism, zurich
Author, Title: Irma Noseda_Martin Steinmann_Zeitzeichen

"With the federal constitution of 1848, the economy can develop free of cantonal barriers. An essential tool in this process is the railroad. Compared to other countries, railroad construction in Switzerland begins late, in the 1850s, on a private basis. To finance it, banking companies are founded, with which capitalism acquires great economic and political power. In response, the democratic movement emerges, which, with the revision of the Federal Constitution in 1874, at least curtails the wild impulses of capitalism. The building industry, for its part, was dominated by the railroad. Negotiations in the SIA revolved again and again around bridges, which had to be built in large numbers in Switzerland. Iron is available in large quantities thanks to new technical processes."

Title: Region, ein Konstrukt?
Author: Friedrich Achleitner
Year: 1986
Source:

Tags: heimat, switzerland

2025-02-13 15:16

Tags: urbanism, global, heimat
Author, Title: McEwen V. Mitch_A Brief Architectural History of Intersectionality

"The work of intersection troubles the assumption that changing society can be imagined by erasing segments and makin them uniform. From the intersection, we can see the formalism of smooth edges, single surfaces and landscaped parametricist urbanism as the fantasy of a centre that never ends, an endless big house."

2025-02-05 16:41

Tags: lifespan, city_planning, function, image, stadtbild
Author, Title: Alessandro Carlini and Bernhard Schneider_Die Stadt als Text

"Der gesellschaftliche Handlungsbereich ist in seinen Bestandteilen und Ordnungsmustern sehr viel instabiler als die bausysteme, mit denen seine Bauaufgaben erfüllt warden. Funktionen sind kurzlebiger als Bauten. Darin liegt einerseits das unlösbare Prognosenproblem aller aktuellen Planung begründet, andererseits das unlösbare Stadtbildproblem, wenn die Bedingung für einmögliches Stadbild in einem Bedeutungsbezug zwischen Bau-Ausdruck und einem Funktions-Inhalt bestehen sollte."

Title: Origins of Kitsch
Author: Gary Tedman
Year: 2009
Source:

Tags: production, aesthetic, kitsch

Title: Mentaler Kapitalismus
Author: Georg Franck
Year: 2005
Source:

Tags: heritage, society, legacy, tradition

Tags: education, heritage, museum, nationalism, protection, [[03_tags/heimatschutz|03_tags/heimatschutz]], heimat

The conservation philosophy held that architectural monuments were best appreciated by the educated, with professionals tasked to preserve and convey the aesthetic values of a ‘Modern European.’ Only those with cultural literacy could fully understand the social and national narratives within these historic structures. Architecture and archaeology, claiming expertise over material culture, played a key role in identifying and protecting significant monuments.

During this ongoing development, the twentieth century saw the rise of numerous new influential global actors. With the call for the “Geistige Landesverteidigung” countless institutions in the intersection of state authority and the private sector were formed for the protection of the built environment, carefully selecting its own narrative along the scattered ground. These included professional organisations, philanthropic foundations, research bodies and lobbying entities, and above all, the Swiss Heimatschutz.

2025-02-07 14:47

Tags: heimat, global, alienation
Author, Title: Bruno Latour_On a Possible Triangulation of Some Present Political Positions

"Well, for onething, in spite of the powerful image of the blue planet that we all have in mind, there is no stable point from which you can survey the Globe as a whole (a point well made by Peter Sloterdijk).2 To consider the planet as a Globe means that you imagine yourself in some sort of godlike position, let’s call it the view from nowhere, and that it is from this imaginary viewpoint that you take every older local attachment to the Land, to the Heimat ,as limited, regressive, and archaic. For us, those who live on the land surveyed by this all-powerful gaze, the Globe appears as an infinite horizon, an always-receding frontier."

Title: Denkmalpflege und Ortsbildschutz
Author: Gottlieb Loertscher
Year: 1987
Source:

Tags: [[03_tags/ensemble|03_tags/ensemble]], stadtbild

Title: Grundriss der Stadt Zürich
Author: unknown
Year: 1696
Source: hellozurich

Tags: zurich, fortification, citywalls, limmat

Title: Grundriss der Stadt Zürich samt Fortifikationswerken
Author: unknown
Year: 1705
Source:

Tags: zurich, fortification, cartography, politics

Title: Industrialisierung, Eisenbahnschlachten und Mietskasernenbau
Author: Hans-Peter Baertschi
Year: 1980
Source:

Tags: class, city, access

2025-02-15 10:12

Tags: home, heimat, romanticism, tradition, city
Author, Title: Friedrich Achleitner _Region, ein Konstrukt

“Der Begriff Heimat hat sich im späten 19. Jahrhundert als zentraler Terminus einer Kulturbewegung entwickelt, die einerseits in Konflikt stand mit der Großstadtkultur der Metropolen (Scholle gegen Asphalt), mit den Auswirkungen der industriellen Revolution, der zunehmenden Überbauung der Landschaft, mit Liberalismus und Unternehmertum, die sich andererseits aber auch bedroht fühlte vom Internationalismus des Proletariats, der Organisation einer neuen Kraft von unten, die ebenfalls als Produkt und Gefahr aus der Großstadt gesehen wurde. [...] Heimat war von vornherein ein brisanter kulturpolitischer Begriff, entstanden aus dem Bewusstsein eines Verlustes einer wie auch immer richtig oder falsch interpretierten heilen Welt. Heimat entstand also in der Polarität von national und international, rational und irrational, Handwerk und Industrie, Kleinstadt/Dorf und Großstadt, Natur und Dekadenz, gesund und krank, Tradition und Fortschritt, sozialer Geborgenheit und anonymer Massengesellschaft. Heimat war eine überschaubare, tradierte Welt. Dem Großstädter wurde sie undweg abgesprochen. Heimat war von Anfang an ein romantischer Fluchtbegriff, entstanden aus dem Bewusstsein eines Verlustes.“

2025-02-07 10:55

Tags: education, image, urbanism, class, moral, reformation
Author, Title: Martin Viehhauser_Reformierung des Menschen durch Stadtraumgestaltung

"Anhand der breiten Betätigungsfelder des Heimatschutzes lässt sich ablesen, dass seine Werte auf einer gesamtgesellschaftlichen Kritik beruhten und dass die Handlungsentwürfe entsprechend gesamtgesellschaftlich ansetzten. Dafür ist die intensive Auseinandersetzung mit dem Schulhausbau ein Beleg, dessen ›erbauliches‹ Potential für die junge Generation als »stiller Miterzieher« erkannt wurde. Wenn der ästhetische Code des Heimatstils zur Kommunikation der regionalen Werte und der Werte der Tradition eingesetzt wurde, so lag dahinter ein umfassender sozialer, kultureller, politischer und ökonomischer Zusammenhang einer moralerzieherischen Strategie, die auf dem Wissen um die Wirkmechanismen der architektonischen Ensemblegestaltung mit städtebaulicher Dimension beruhte."

2025-02-06 11:16

Tags: discourse, archive, identity
Author, Title: David Harvey_The History of Heritage

"Heritage itself is not a thing and does not exist by itself – nor does it imply a movement or a project. Rather, heritage is about the process by which people use the past – a ‘discursive construction’ with material consequences."

2025-02-06 13:22

Tags: nationalism, heimat, class, education, heritage
Author, Title: Raphael Samuel_Theatres of Memory

"Heritage, according to the critics, is the mark of a sick society, one which, despairing of the future, had become besotted or obsessed with an idealized version of its past. The historicist turn in british culture, which they date from 1975 - the year when the term heritage began its inflationary career - corresponded to the onset of economic recession, the contraction of manufacturing industry and the return of mass unemployment. It testified to the collapse of british power. Heritage prepared the way for, or could be thought as giving expression to, a recrudescene of Little Englandism and the revival of nationalism as a force in political life. It anticipated and gave expression to the triumph of Thatcherism in the sphere of high politics. Heritage in short, was a symbol of national decadence; a malignant growth which testified at once to the strength of this country ancient regime and to the weakness of radical alternatives to it. It was an admission, according to Robert Hewison in “The Heritage Industry” that history was over. In Patrick Wrights “On Living in an old country” it was part of the selffulfilling culture of national decline."

2025-02-06 11:21

Tags: education, future, politics, preservation
Author, Title: David Harvey_The History of Heritage

"Augustus Pugin’s polemical Contrasts portrayed heritage as a reactionary answer to a supposed moral malaise, while John Ruskin sought a more progressive society through heritage – albeit one that sees social cohesion as part of an organically hierarchical society (Brooks, 1998, 8–10). As the nineteenth century progressed, heritage became the vehicle for both ‘conservative’ and ‘radical/progressive’ movements searching for an answer to the perceived evils of modern society. Cultural elites, as represented by figures such as George Gilbert Sco and the Cambridge Camden Society (and, indeed, as witnessed at many a provincial museum and amateur intellectual society) sought to maintain natural hierarchy and authority as a specific way of reading the world (Brand, 1998, 13–14; Miele, 1998, 106–7). William Morris, in contrast, used heritage as a means to encourage social and economic revolution. It is from figures such as Morris and the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) that a concern for preservation (as opposed to restoration or ‘reconstitution’) comes"

2025-02-05 16:07

Tags: discourse, construction, heritage, memory, subjectivity
Author, Title: Alan Chandler and Michela Pace_The production of Heritage, p. 3

"Heritage is about the process by which people use the past - a 'discursive construction' with material consequences." This means that heritage is a selective concept that does not necessarily involve history, as history would entail a more careful observation of the facts and their implications. Heritage doesn't do the same work as history. It can be easily isolated and rearranged to inform a bespoke narrative. At heart, heritage refers to "the ways in which very selected past materials and artefacts, natural landscapes, mythologies, memories and traditions become cultural, political and economic resources for the present". Present concerns, therefore, are the temporal dimension of heritage. Its construction is closely linked to the notion of "memory" that, unlike history, seeks an uncritical relationship with the past."

2025-02-05 16:10

Tags: consumption, heritage, history, narrative, representation
Author, Title: Alan Chandler and Michela Pace_The production of Heritage, p. 4

"If we assume that heritage is a "contemporary use of the past", we should think that heritage is then used or 'consumed'. "What is consumed, however, is not so much the heritage itself, in the form of, for example, a building or a cultural landscape, but its representation in the form of historical narrative.""

Title: Essays on Architecture and City Planning
Author: Hermann Czech
Year: 2019
Source:

Tags: urbanism, city

2025-02-13 15:42

Tags: modernity, global, future, local
Author, Title: Jorge Otero-Pailos_Experimental Preservation

"Frederic Jameson described postmodern culture as “an ultimate historicist breakdown in which we can no longer imagine the future at all, under any form — Utopian or catastrophic.” 19 To imagine the future, Jameson argued, one had to establish some historiographical relationship to it from the viewpoint of the present. But the problem was not a lack of historiographical models; the problem was more profound, even existential: it was the difficulty, perhaps even impossibility, of experiencing the present as historical — as part of the continuum of history. To counter this difficulty, Jameson proposed that we need to establish a relationship to the present that “somehow defamiliarizes it and allows us that distance from immediacy which is at length characterized as a historical perspective.” 20 In other words, we need to reify immediate experiences, to imagine them, say, as mental objects that can be named “the Noughts” or “the Teens”; and we also need to choose and reify physical objects — the street we live on, for instance, or the building where our community gathers."

2025-02-05 15:34

Tags: popular_memoryentertainment
Author, Title: Raphael Samuel_Theatres of Memory

"History has always been a hybrid form of knowledge, syncretizing past and present, memory and myth, the written record and the spoken word. Its subject matter is promiscuous… In popular memory, if not in high scholarship, the great flood or the freakstorm may eclipse wars, battles and the rise and fall of governments. As a form of communication, history finds expression not only in chronicle and commentary butalso ballad and song, legends and proverbs, riddles and puzzles. Church liturgies have carried one version of it – sacred history; civic ritual another. A present-day inventory would need to be equally alert to the memory work performed (albeit unintentionally)by the advertisers, and to the influence of tourism … As a self-conscious art, history begins with the monuments and inscriptions, and as the record of the built environment suggests, not the least of the influences changing historical consciousness today is the writing on the walls. The influence of video-games and science-fiction would be no less pertinent in trying to explain why the idea of chronological reversal, or time traveling, has become a normal way of engaging with the idea of the past."

Tags: history, commercial, tourist, universal

"Under this new form of governance, numerous nations in Europe have had no other choice but to monetize their historical conscience, millennial traditions, monuments, for the sake and proliferation of the tourism sector - ironically enough, the past that is often sold and showcased, is an increasing course of ignominy, intentionally refuted b opportunistic politics eager to satisfy naïve and dogmatic beliefs, where historical figures are publicly chastised.

History, with all its local and regional nuances and riches, has run its course - put on a shelf to be sold - it is now the race towards the universal, the McDonaldization."

2025-02-06 11:19

Tags: class, access, patrimoine
Author, Title: David Harvey_The History of Heritage

"Rather, what we can attempt to outline is a history of heritage in terms of a history of power relations that have been formed and operate via the deployment of the heritage process. This chapter, therefore, focuses upon the historical narrative of the changing forms of this process; its developing technologies, modes of representation and levels of access and control – in short, upon the history of the struggle to control the use of heritage within society."

Title: Hochwachten im Kanton Zürich
Author: unknown
Year: 1730
Source: ZB

Tags: fortification, cartography, geolocation, zurich

Title: Hochwachten Karte
Author: Johann Ulrich Schmutz
Year: 1648
Source: Zentralbibliothek Zürich

Tags: fortification, cartography, geolocation, zurich

Title: Hochwachten Karte
Author: Johannes Haller
Year: 1750
Source: Zentralbibliothek Zürich

Tags: fortification, zurich, medieval, cartography, geolocation

2025-02-07 10:58

Tags: reformation, heimat, tactics, stadtbild, politics
Author, Title: Martin Viehhauser_Reformierung des Menschen durch Stadtraumgestaltung

"Das Handlungsmuster der Sozialreform wird verständlich auf dem Hintergrund dieses Elements: der Wirkmacht der Vorstellungen von Ordnung. Diese Vorstellungen – mit Durkheim die Voraussetzung, um
im Kontext der Stadtraumgestaltung den Begriff ›Erziehung‹ fruchtbar zu machen – zielen auf die Vermittlung zwischen Individuum und Gesellschaft im Hinblick auf die Zukunftsdimension der Sicherung des gesellschaftlichen Funktionierens. Die wahrgenommene Notwendigkeit, dieses Verhältnis organisieren zu müssen, erschien in dem Moment als dringlich, in dem die traditionellen gesellschaftlichen und kulturellen
Formen als in Zerstörung begriffen betrachtet wurden. Sie wurde innerhalb der wissensbasierten Aufassung handlungswirksam, die die gesellschaftliche Lage als in Unordnung geraten charakterisierte: Pflüger"

2025-02-06 13:20

Tags: protection, consumption, reformation
Author, Title: John Ruskin_The Seven Lamps of Architecture

"The principle of modern times, (a principle which, I believe, at least in France, to be systematically acted on by the masons, in order to find themselves work, as the abbey of St. Ouen was pulled down by the magistrates of the town by way of giving work to some vagrants) is to neglect buildings first, and restore them afterwards. Take proper care of your monuments, and you will not need to restore them."

2025-02-07 16:33

Tags: heimat, local, global, politics
Author, Title: Bruno Latour_Der Planet rebelliert

"Realismus und Mut erteilen können. Wie man beim Vergleich der Teile von Reitz’ Heimat- Trilogie sieht, ließ sich die Lebenswelt – im Sinne der Welt, von
der man lebt – seit Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts bis in die 2000er- Jahre allmählich immer schwerer beschreiben. Das heißt nicht, dass man zur Heimat als Region oder Territorium zurückkehren wird; es heißt vielmehr, dass wir im Begriff
der Heimat ein gewaltiges Beschreibungspotenzial entdecken können, mit dem wir – in den Künsten wie in den Wissenschaften – arbeiten müssen, um diese beiden heute von ein an der getrennten Ensembles wieder aufeinander beziehen zu können: das, was unseren Lebensunterhalt ermöglicht, und das, was wir unseren legitimen Besitz nennen."

2025-02-05 16:53

Tags: intangible, local, global, material_culture
Author, Title: Laurajane Smith_Uses of Heritage

"If heritage is a mentality, a way of knowing and seeing, then all heritage becomes, in a sense, ‘intangible’. The issue of intangibility has been a significant one in Western heritage literature and debate in recent years. Some commentators assert that the increasing debate in the West about intangible heritage is due to a late twentieth-century re-evaluation of modernity, and an increasing concern with the local in response to fears of globalization (Deacon et al. 2004: 10; see also Berking 2003; Castells 2004). Non-Western conceptualizations of heritage have begun to question the hegemonic dominance of the idea of the materiality of heritage, and have come to play an important role in questioning received ideas about it. Challenges to Western traditional conceptualizations have occurred in response to specific events, such as the controversy and debate sparked by the ‘re-painting’ of rock art sites in Western Australia during the 1980s. In this case, Aboriginal custodians were accused of re-painting sites in ‘non-traditional’ ways and thus ‘destroying’ ancient rock art. The custodians countered that what was important, in terms of Aboriginal perspectives, was the maintenance of cultural practice and meaning. The act of re-painting was vital in keeping alive certain values and meaning in a way that the simple existence of the sites could not. The point here was that it was the practice and not the types of material used in that practice, or the site itself, that maintained meanings and cultural knowledge This event directly contradicts the ‘conserve as found’ ethos and questions the universality of the assumption that it is fabric that is important as heritage. However, challenges to these assumptions have also occurred through a general increased awareness in the West that other cultures, particularly from Africa and Asia, perceive heritage differently. For instance, invoking a sense of heritage similar to that in the re-painting debate, some Japanese historic buildings may be regularly and entirely rebuilt with modern materials and techniques without compromising their heritage values or sense of authenticity to the Japanese"

Title: Illustration
Author: Christoph Silberysen
Year: 1560
Source: unknown

Tags: zurich , stadtbild, medieval

2025-02-05 16:03

Tags: ethic, patrimoine, aesthetic
Author, Title: Laurajane Smith_Uses of Heritage

"The French idea of patrimoine– specifically the concept of inheritance – also underwrites the sense of aesthetic grandness (Choay 2001). This sense of inheritance promotes the idea that the present has a particular ‘duty’ to the past and its monuments. The duty of the present is to receive and revere what has been passed on and in turn pass this inheritance, untouched, to future generations. The French sense of patrimony found synergy in the English conservation ethos of ‘conserve as found’, heavily influenced by John Ruskin and his treatise The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1899)."

Title: Zeitzeichen
Author: Irma Noseda_Martin Steinmann
Year: 1988
Source:

Tags:

Tags: heimat, stadtbild, heritage, preservation, nationalism, identity, urbanism, ideology, authority, institution, culture

It is within this wider authoritan gesture of selective attribution of meaning and value to site and structure that heritage industries have evolved, such as Switzerland’s Denkmalpflege, Heimatschutz, and ISOS. The tradition, reaching back to the early heritage discourse, allows insight into the practice of power structures reinterpreting the past through selective cultural and ideological lenses that identify what is worthy of preservation according to values and priorities current at any given time. In the 19th century, it was argued that the practical usability of historical buildings should not be considered when cataloging them. This perspective has had lasting consequences, even to this day: it continues to hinder the preservation of neighborhoods of the “common people.” These districts have little or no visual representation of status; therefore, their façades appear humble, especially in comparison to patrician houses or noble palaces.

Historically, Heritage preservation developed through significant ideological shifts over time-from Enlightenment ideals of scientific objectivity through revolutionary frameworks of selective preservation that set up what is deemed “essential”. By doing so, it defines the raw material into parcels ready for preservation or consumption. Alternatively, they may be labeled as polluted, damaged, and contaminated, thereby becoming targets for reclamation and development as seen in the Altstadtsanierung in Zurich.

Within Switzerland, this happened in a landscape of political drive for national unity, wherein heritage becomes embedded in narratives that express an aestheticized and idealized past rather than real social change. With the beginnings of the Heimatschutzbewegung, changing living conditions and production methods were concealed through “kleinbürgerlicher” architecture until this fiction could no longer be sustained. However, the codification of a national identity had already emerged in the context of a manifesto that juxtaposed ideas of a modern, but well-fortified Switzerland with a culture of preservation of the country’s natural heritage.

The concept of protecting entire urban ensembles was first articulated by Camillo Sitte in 1889. One could argue that this attempt was the starting point of an aesthetic development in which the collective imagination moved so radically away from its means of subsistence that only aesthetic renewal prevented the break. In 1908, under the mandate of the federal government, the Heimatschutz organization designated so-called protection zones for the most prestigious districts of Zurich—areas reflecting not so much the history of settlement but rather the prevailing power structures of the time. This comprehensive approach to protection, however, gained decisive traction in its parallel movement, nature conservation, with the founding of Switzerland’s first national park in 1914.

It could be argued that heritage preservation was only institutionalized in the wake of large-scale destruction, not as a mere response but as part of a broader initiative. The Athens Charter elevated the value of heritage conservation on an international scale, though its chapters remained shaped by national perspectives.Following the Second World War, the theme of urban reconstruction took on significant momentum. Though cities had been laid to waste, plans for their reconstruction and for the radical reorganization of urban space had already been conceived behind the scenes. Yet, historic city centers retained their symbolic role, anchoring the ideology of organic growth within tangible reality. Consequently, the war-damaged old towns had to be meticulously reconstructed to their original form, a sentiment that later resonated in the eighth CIAM conference, The Heart of the City.

With the Venice Charter 1964 the formalization of heritage practices shifted the focus from isolated monuments to entire “ensembles,” thereby providing this apparent urban coherence with a solid pictorial content. With the compression of space and time and the increasingly fluid circulation of capital, alongside the growing homogenization of space, a stronger, alternative construction of local identity emerged. Places began to compete for distinctiveness. Viewed from this perspective, the Venice Charter’s principles were no longer assessed nationally but locally. Since the 1970s, the most influential example of assigning meaning—and, naturally, of enhancing value—has been UNESCO’s designation of World Cultural Heritage status to sites, whether urban or natural.

Amid the rapid urbanization of the 1970s and the concurrent homogenization and global struggle for identity, a newly established organization known as ISOS (Inventarisation schützenswerter Ortsbilder der Schweiz) emerged as a mediator between these opposing forces. This inventory serves as a snapshot of the so-called urban landscapes of variously sized population centers. Based on the assigned cultural or historical value, preservation goals are set for these landscapes.

In our view, the contemporary Heritage Discourse, with its focus on material preservation, expert authority, and static interpretations, often limits a broader understanding of heritage. Rooted in Western nationalist and elite narratives, it overlooks intangible elements, community perspectives, and heritage’s evolving nature. A critical perspective calls for a shift toward viewing heritage as a cultural process intertwined with identity, collective memory, and the meaning of place. The authoritarian approach of separation and segregation, historically imposed by architecture and planning under the influence of politics and industry, gives way to a new paradigm—one of synthesis, openness, and the transcendence of boundaries.

2025-02-05 16:54

Tags: home, representation, subjectivity
Author, Title: Lauren Elkin_Flaneuse

"It’s not pretty, but it’s home."

Title: Edge of Empire
Author: Jane Jacobs
Year: 1996
Source:

Tags: identity, heritage, city, urbanism

Title: The Seven Lamps of Architecture
Author: John Ruskin
Year: 1849
Source:

Tags: memory, class, industrialisation, education

Title: Experimental Preservation
Author: Jorge Otero-Pailos
Year: 2016
Source: Places Journal

Tags: preservation, monument, culture, mediator

Title: Preservation is Overtaking Us
Author: Jorge Otero-Pailos
Year: 2014
Source:

Tags: supplementation, architecture, preservation

Title: Judgement of Paris
Author: Raphael
Year: 1510
Source: Wikipedia

Tags: paris

Title: Legislation
Author: Kantonale Denkmalpflege
Year: 2025
Source:

Tags:

Title: Heimlich Manoeuvre
Author: Kari Jormakka
Year: 1995
Source:

Tags: ritual, architecture,

Title: Karte der Stadtrepublik von Zürich
Author: J. G. Seiter
Year: 1698
Source: Wikipedia

Tags: zurich, cartography, class

Title: The politics of the Plinth
Author: Kasper Laegring
Year: 2018
Source:

Tags: urbanism, collective_eye

Title: Kloster Oetenbach
Author: Johann Melchior Füssli
Year: 1705
Source: Gebrüder Dürst

Tags: cloister, industrialisation, reformation, zurich

Title: Kronenporte
Author: Johann Heinrich Freijtag
Year: 1744
Source: Gebrüder Dürst

Tags: medieval, fortification, zurich

Title: Küfer auf dem Limmatstein
Author: Johann Caspar Ulinger
Year: 1740
Source:

Tags: limmat, society, bridge, [[03_tags/rathausbrücke|rathausbrücke]], infrastructure, water

Title: The Pathos of Conservation
Author: Kynan Gentry
Year: 2015
Source:

Tags: politics reclamation

Title: L'essai sur l architecture
Author: Marc Antoine Laugier
Year: 1753
Source:

Tags: history, architecture

Old English landmearc “object set up to mark the boundaries of a kingdom, estate, etc.,” from
land (n.) + mearc in its sense “object which marks a boundary or limit” (see mark (n.1)). General sense of “conspicuous object which, by its known position, serves as a guide to a traveler,” originally especially an object that can be seen from sea, is from 1560s. Modern figurative sense of “event, etc., considered a high point in history” is from 1859.
-etymonline

Foundation

The term landmark, derived from Old English landmearc, initially described an object marking territorial boundaries. Over time, it came to mean a visible and recognizable feature that guides travelers—especially important in seafaring contexts. By the 19th century, it also acquired a metaphorical meaning, denoting important historical events or turning points. Similarly, the concept of the “Stadtbild” transcended its original purpose as a literal representation of urban boundaries or features. In art and cartography, early depictions of cities, such as the Florentine vedute, were never purely literal renditions of their subjects. These images adhered to their own laws of production, oscillating between imagination and possible realities. They are not objective representations but rather subjective interpretations that reflect the desires of patrons, the perspectives of artists, and the expectations of the public.

The Role of Landmarks and Cityscape

In defining Ortsbild and Stadtbild, landmarks serve as more than just physical or aesthetic markers; they act as quasi-objects that define relations within urban spaces, as described by philosopher Michel Serres. For instance, just as a ball in team sports traces and creates relationships between players, landmarks anchor social and spatial relations in cities, shaping collective experiences. Cityscapes, as visual constructs, do not simply mirror reality. Instead, they act as imaginative forms that anticipate urban possibilities. The reality of the Stadtbild is “a head reality”—a discursive entity that reveals the artist’s vision, the commissioner’s wishes, and the public’s expectations. These images are integral historical sources, offering insights into how societies have envisioned urban spaces throughout time.

2025-02-07 11:05

Tags: language, image, urbanism, city
Author, Title: Manfredo Tafuri_The Sphere and the Labyrinth

"Piranesi, no longer founding language on the authority of history, brings to completion, coherently, the same principle of reason that guided him in his diggings into antiquity. Just as history is the reconstructive analysis of ancient findings, so language, precisely because it is finally freed from the authority of history here Piranesi reveals what he has learned from Lodoli will impose itself as “an in-progress criticism of language itself. "

2025-02-13 16:35

Tags: ethic, repair, idealisation, stadtbild
Author, Title: Alberto Pérez-Gomez_The City is not a Post-Card

"To conclude, let me return to the crucial role of language in all of this, the language of poetry, of course, as a language “against” the conventional connotative power of prose, capable of expressing for us the true essence of a place, a city or a region, but also the language of stories, capable of articulating ways of life, relationships, modes of engagement, and most importantly, ethical issues. These are the stories of the traditional dwellers, of the historical dwellers, and of the future dwellers, eventually taking the form of the programs that architects and urban designers put forward for new modes of collective participation in the city of the future. This latter use of language is part of the architectural and urban project, as important I would argue as the drawings that may give it form, one which has precedents in the early modern works of Ledoux and Lequeu.
This language is emphatically not algorithmic, it is not about functions but a vision of a poetic life, for an idealized client, one that is thus related to its context. It is the language of the humanities, and not one of hard science. It is deliberately a narrative language, keeping in mind Merleau-Ponty’s observation that our fixation with calculation and universal language is a sure way to kill true language and human expression. The program for the new city respectful of cultural identity is a promise, and must be one of beauty and justice, terms that as Elaine Scarry has shown, point to the same value rather than being antithetical; it is borne from the architect’s responsible, personal imagination, through compassion for the other, as a project for the common good."

Title: Uses of Heritage
Author: Laurajane Smith
Year:
Source: 2004

Tags: identity, representation, politics

Title: Flâneuse
Author: Lauren Elkin
Year: 2019
Source:

Tags: walk, home

2025-02-14 14:00

Tags: stadtbild, renaissance, cartography, geolocation, objectivity
Author, Title: Andreas Beyer_Wie kommt die Stadt ins Bild

Dass die Wiedergabe der Stadt allein den Gesetzen des Malerischen oder zeichnerischen gehorche und also kaum zur verlässlichen Wiedergabe der Wirklichkeit tauge, daran hat schon einer der frühesten Protagonisten des Stadt-Bild-Diskurs keinen Zweifel gehabt. Leon Battista Alberti zwischen 1430 und 1450 entstandene, nur vierseitige Schrift Descriptio Urbis Romae ist ein ebenso frühes wie untrügliches Zeugnis dieser Skepsis. Albertis gesamtes oeuvre kommt nahezu ohne Bilder aus. Das ist nicht etwa einer mangelnden Begabung oder einer prekären Überlieferung geschuldet. Es ist Ausdruck einer Strategie. Damit geräte der (alphanumerische) Text zum sich selbst-aussprechenden Gegenstand, der keiner weiteren Ergänzung durch das Bild oder Diagramm bedurfte. Damit reagierte Alberti auf den ihm noch nicht zur Verfügung stehende Buchdruck. Erst dieser erlaubte ja eine verlässliche, unkontaminierte Verbreitung des Wissens und zudem die unverfälschliche Reproduktion des Bildes in der Druckgrafik.”

2025-02-10 12:09

Tags: landscape, power, aesthetic
Author, Title: Raimund Rodewald_Sehnsucht Landschaft

"Berge, Wälder, Meere und Wüsten galten am Ende des Mittelalters als Inbegriffe des Schrecken, als "pays affreux", sie waren alles andere als die liebliche fruchtbare Landschaft, die vom Menschen bewohnt und kultiviert wird. Heute hat sich bei vielen der ästhetische Eindruck der Welt genau umgekehrt: der menschgeprägte, von der natur gereinigte Raum wird für das menschliche Auge und Wohlbefinden zunehmend als abstossend empfunden, während wir die reine Natur, die als solche kaum noch existiert, sehnsüchtig umgarnen und idealisieren. Das Land, das sich seit dem ausgehenden 15. Jahrhundert unter dem wahrnehmenden Auge des Betrachters langsam zur Landschaft formte, scheint als Folge der ungeheuren Vereinnahmung durch den Menschen - wieder in die ästhetische Belanglosigkeit einer seelisch geistig entleerten Materie Land zurückklassiert zu werden. "

2025-02-06 11:51

Tags: novelty, mundane, recycle, custodianship
Author, Title: Rem Koolhaas_Preservation is Overtaking Us

"Architecture is saved from obsolescence and appears contemporary as it is framed and reframed by preservation as culturally significant. To accept this means letting go of the illusio, to use Bourdieu’s terminology, that what makes architecture culturally relevant, and what holds the discipline together, is the architect’s ability to engender new forms. Koolhaas wryly describes this letting go of that illusio as entering a “demoralized zone,” which imposes “a heavy toll on its architects’ originality. Underneath the pragmatist is the enfant terrible nudging architects to face their fears and let go of form-making as the royal road to cultural significance. Preservation can offer a new path of cultural relevance for architects, but at the price of changing the core of what we believe architectural creativity should be focused on.
"

Title: Words Without Pictures
Author: Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Year: 2009
Source:

Tags: kitsch, popular_memory, collective_eye, class

Title: Anthologie Landschaft
Author: Lucius Burckhardt
Year: 1995
Source:

Tags: landscape, idealisation, consumption

Title: Die Stadt als zersprengte Ordnung
Author: Manfredo Tafuri
Year: 1979
Source:

Tags: stadtgestalt, urbanism, language

Title: The Sphere and the Labyrinth
Author: Manfredo Tafuri
Year: 1978
Source:

Tags: urbanism, class

2025-02-07 11:10

Tags: aesthetic, moral, class, kitsch
Author, Title: Hermann Czech_Essays on Architecture and City Planning

"Mustn’t on the contrary, a participation concept also include those whose hearts are full of malice? Mustn’t n architectural concept be capable of taking in everything that surrounds us, the cliched, the dishonest, the ready made? Without aesthetic and therefore moral judgement. Some senses of the unexpected, the absurd and that which contradicts the rules."

Title: Map of Rome
Author: Giambattista Nolli
Year: 1748
Source: Wikimedia

Tags: cartography, rome, monument, heritage

Title: Map of Rome
Author: Giovanni Batista Piranesi
Year: 1762
Source: Wikimedia

Tags: cartography, monument, rome, subjectivity

Title: Le Monument Classé, Alibi du Monument non classé
Author: Marc Amery
Year: 1987
Source:

Tags: monument, inventory, devaluation

Title: Reformierung des Menschen durch Stadtraumgestaltung
Author: Martin Viehhauser
Year: 2016
Source:

Tags: tactics, strategy, heimatstil, urbanism, city

Title: Cum Grano Salis
Author: Max Frisch
Year: 1953
Source:

Tags: historic_city_center, zurich, stadtgestalt

Title: A Brief Architectural History of Intersectionality
Author: McEwen V. Mitch
Year: 2022
Source:

Tags: urbanism, universal, local

Title: Geplante Altstadt
Author: Melchior Fischli
Year: 2012
Source: e-periodica

Tags: historic_city_center, zurich, backdrop, picturesque

Title: Raum - Bild Vermittlung
Author: Michael Müller
Year: 2008
Source:

Tags: stadtbild, future, strategy

Title: The Archaeology of Knowledge
Author: Michel Foucault
Year: 1969
Source:

Tags: archive, discourse, education, politics

Title: The Parasite
Author: Michel Serres
Year: 1980
Source:

Tags: signal, exchange, mediation, class, relation

Tags: cartography, rome, monument, heritage, landmark

The Mirabilia Urbis Romae (Marvels of the City of Rome) holds an important place in the early development of heritage discourse, acting as a precursor to modern efforts of identifying and categorizing cultural heritage. Written in the 12th century as a pilgrimage guide, it blended descriptions of ancient Roman monuments and Christian sites, helping visitors navigate the city’s sacred and historical landscape. Although the text’s primary purpose was to provide religious pilgrims with a tool to appreciate the Christian significance of the city’s landmarks, it also contributed to the identification of these buildings as worthy of attention and preservation.

The Mirabilia cataloged many of Rome’s prominent landmarks, including ancient ruins such as the Colosseum, Pantheon, and Forum, alongside major Christian sites like St. Peter’s Basilica and St. John Lateran. However, it often did so through a lens that reinterpreted these structures in the context of Christian narratives and miracles. For instance, ancient Roman buildings were not seen primarily as historical artifacts of a pagan civilization, but rather as sites imbued with Christian significance. This approach reflects an early heritage perspective, where the value of physical structures was tied to their ability to convey moral religious meaning.

This urge for self-representation arose from the demographic and economic boom of the city between the 11th and 14th centuries, when there was a growing need to regulate communal life. Out of this regulatory function, the cityscape emerged as an autonomous form of representation, with its artistic expression captured in vedute (city views). The built and painted exterior of the city was intended to reflect its internal state. This was a political concern that, from the outset, represented a constantly contested issue. The Enlightenment further fueled this debate, as the city’s reality was expected to adhere to scientific principles rather than merely satisfy the illusion of an image. The precise measurement of cities later became an instrument for reforming their Gestalt, guided by scientific accuracy. Cartographic principles, in turn, rose to prominence.

Title: Mirabilia Urbis Romae
Author: Alessandro Strozzi
Year: 1474
Source: Wikipedia

Tags: guide, pilgrim, tourist, monument, patrimoine

Title: Mirabilia Urbis Romae
Author: unknown
Year: 1499
Source: Wikimedia

Tags: pilgrim, tourist, monument

2025-02-05 17:04

Tags: value, picturesque, patrimoine, protection
Author, Title: William Morris_The SPAB Manifesto

"To put Protection in the place of Restoration, to stave off decay by daily care, to prop a perilous wall or mend a leaky roof by such means as are obviously meant for support or covering, and show no pretence of other art, and otherwise to resist all tampering with either the fabric or ornament of the building as it stands . . . in fine to treat our ancient buildings as monuments of a bygone art, created by bygone manners, that modern art cannot meddle with without destroying."

Title: Murerkarte
Author: Jos Murer
Year: 1566
Source: LMVZ

Tags: zurich, cartography, medieval, stadtbild

Title: Murerplan
Author: JosMurer
Year: 1576
Source: Wikipedia

Tags: zurich, plan, medieval, city

2025-02-05 16:44

Tags: custodianship, class, The rural idyll, nationalism
Author, Title: Laurajane Smith_Uses of Heritage

"Rather than the original sense of holding public lands in trust for the public, the National Trust adopted, at this time, a ‘Ruskinian’ sense of trusteeship over the types of buildings that inherently appealed to Romantics and organizations like the SPAB. In addition, the conservation ideas and the ideologies embedded in the European conservation movement helped to legitimate the Trust’s almost seamless adoption of Kerr’s ‘Country House Scheme’, and to become subsequently a major and natural advocate for the preservation of elite heritage as ‘national’ heritage."

Tags: switzerland, nationalism, identity, monument, archive, power
In 1798, Switzerland underwent significant political and economic turmoil due to the French invasion and the establishment of the Helvetic Republic, marking a pivotal moment in its history. The transformation from a decentralised federation of autonomous cantons into a unitary state with a national government destabilised the political and economic order of the previous system. The need for new mechanisms to foster social cohesion and ensure stability by promoting a sense of “national” community became increasingly urgent. It was not long before a national archive, led by Philipp Albert Stapfer, was established. Historic monuments were suddenly not viewed just as relics to be preserved, but as structures to be reinterpreted within the context of power dynamics, creating their own narrative from the scattered ground.

2025-02-13 15:59

Tags: preservation, politics, capitalism
Author, Title: Dolores Hayden_The Power of Place

"A socially inclusive urban landscape history can become the basis for new approaches to public history and urban preservation. This will be different from, but complementary to, the art-historical approach to architecture that has provided a basis for architectural preservation. A more inclusive urban landscape history can also stimulate new approached to urban design, encouraging designers, artists, and writers, as well as citizens, to contribute to an urban art of creating a heightened sense of place in the city. This would be urban design that recognizes the social diversity of the city as well as the communal uses of space, very different from urban design as monumental architecture governed by form or driven by real estate speculation."

2025-02-05 15:47

Tags: identity, origin, nationalism
Author, Title: Laurajane Smith_Uses of Heritage

"Harvey cautions that the tendency to see heritage as largely a modern phenomena works to reduce debates about heritage to specific technical issues over contemporary management and conservation practices, and subsequently any real engagement with debates about how heritage is involved in the production of identity, power and authority are obscured (2001: 320). However, my task here is to examine what Harvey (2001: 323) himself identifies as a particular ‘strand’, but which is more usefully discussed as a particular discourse, of heritage that emerged in late nineteenth century Europe and has achieved dominance as a ‘universalizing’ discourse in the twenty-first century. One of the consequences of this discourse is to actively obscure the power relations that give rise to it and to make opaque the cultural and social work that ‘heritage’ does. While there is a general interest in the past, there is a discourse of heritage that creates a particular set of cultural and social practices that have certain consequences in the context of late modernity. Although some commentators today see heritage as having a particular post-modern expression tied to economic commodification and hyper-relativism, this is simply not the case. The origins of the dominant heritage discourse are linked to the development of nineteenth-century nationalism and liberal modernity, and while competing discourses do occur, the dominant discourse is intrinsically embedded with a sense of the pastoral care of the material past."

2025-02-06 11:24

Tags: politics, consumption, tourist,
Author, Title: David Harvey_The History of Heritage

"In the later half of the twentieth century, the standard description of heritage, no longer as a ‘social movement’, but an ‘industry’, became commonplace, as did its easy relation to conservatism both with a small ‘c’ and a big ‘C’"

Tags: romanticism, industrialisation, heritage, education, subjectivity

Romanticism developed as a reaction to the rapid discontinuities brought by urbanisation and industrialization, longing for a more idyllic, rural past. This movement turned their sight towards the preservation of structures such as churches and the residences of the rural upper class, which became key elements in the heritage discussions of the 20th century.

The effort to spread these values aligned well with the liberal education movement of this time, which emphasised a moral duty to inform the public about their civic and national responsibilities. As a result, educating people about the significance and value of historic buildings and monuments became an integral part of a broader ‘conservation ethic’.

Our understanding of heritage as something that is our birthright, that is inherently part of us, more closely linked to “inheritance”, implicates the sense of aesthetic grandness and that the present generation has a specific responsibility to honour the past and to pass this legacy, unchanged, to future generations. Therefore finding synergies with the English conservation principle of “conserve as found”, significantly influenced by John Ruskin. It seems as if these monuments carry within themselves their intrinsic value, one that is not “constructed”, but “found” by experts in the field.

Tags: stadtbild, protection, switzerland, isos, image, place

A new manifesto juxtaposed the vision of a modern yet well-fortified Switzerland with a commitment to preserving the nation’s natural heritage, culminating in the “Bundesgesetz für Natur- und Heimatschutz” in 1966. Here again, the NHG also primarily revealsan approach towards the protection of landscape, even though it is worth noting that nature and heritage protection have a common law.

Building on this legal framework, the Swiss government later established the Federal Inventory of Swiss Heritage Sites (ISOS) to systematically identify and preserve areas of national importance.

With the invention of the ISOS the applied ideal of extensive nature conservation was drawn back to its origins in a recursive metaphor: to the architectural monument perceived as endangered and therefore in need of protection, to which the establishment of a secteur sauvegardé, a protected monument area, was directed. And so they turned their gaze away from the single object towards the city, the city as an object, the place as an image.

Since then ISOS has become a main actor in the Swiss heritage preservation discussion, systematically documenting a wide range of urban and rural landscapes. The “Ortsbilder” include not only buildings but also streets, squares, gardens, parks, promenades, and unbuilt areas such as fields and vineyards.

Title: Panorama der Stadt Zürich links der Limmat
Author: Hans Leu der Ältere
Year: 1450
Source:

Tags: stadtbild, panorama, medieval, limmat, water

Title: Historic Preservation: Philosophy, Criteria, Guidelines
Author: Paul Philippot
Year: 1996
Source:

Tags: preservation, history

2025-02-13 15:46

Tags: preservation, subjectivity, capitalism
Author, Title: Jorge Otero-Pailos_Experimental Preservation

"The other term is pentimenti which comes from the Italian pentirsi, which means to repent. The idea of pentimenti was defined in art history as a presence of traces of previous work, sometimes showing that the artist had changed his or her mind in the process of work. "

Title: Unknown
Author: Philip Ursprung
Year: 2024
Source:

Tags:

2025-02-14 17:10

Tags: preservation, enlightenment, culture, heritage, nationalism, switzerland, archive
Author, Title: Benjamin Gygax_Vom Raritäten Kabinett zur propriété nationale

“Dem fünfköpfigen helvetischen Direktorium sind vier Minister als Fachberater und Leiter eines Verwaltungsbereiches unterstellt. Philipp Albert Stapfer ist verantwortlich für ein Ministerialressort, welches das Schulwesen, die Kulturpflege, Presse und Kirche sowie die öffentlichen Bauten umfasst. Für diese breitgefächerten Aufgaben bietet ihm die Verfassung kaum Richtlinien. Minister Stapfer plant die Schaffung einer Nationaluniversität, einer Nationalbibliothek und eines Archivs sowie eines naturhistorischen Museums mit botanischem Absicht, Garten. Diese Aufzählung zeigt bereits das Engagement Stapfers für alle Aspekte der Kultur und Wissenschaft der damaligen Zeit. Darüber hinaus setzt sich Stapfer mit der ein Büro für Nationalkultur zu schaffen, nicht nur für die Erhaltung alten Kulturgutes, sondern auch für die Kulturschaffenden seiner Zeit ein. Der Krieg erfordert jedoch vor allem den Schutz von Kulturgütern.
Dass ausgerechnet ein revolutionärer Staat der ohne Zweifel drängendere Probleme zu bewältigen gehabt hätte, sich mit Kultur befasst, hat wohl mehrere Gründe: Zunächst einmal ist der Aufklärung grundsätzlich ein wissenschaftliches und kulturelles Interesse zu eigen. Mit Philipp Albert Stapfer hat die Helvetische Republik einen der diese Interessen teilt und sich vorbehaltlos für sie einsetzt. Entscheidend für das staatliche Kulturminister, Engagement in der Erhaltung von Kulturgütern scheint neben dem grossen Interesse aber eine neue Beurteilung ihres Charakters. Die ehemaligen Kuriositäten- oft in privatem Besitz- erhalten im Laufe des 18. Jahrhunderts den Status eines «propriété nationale», wie Stapfer sie nennt.
Es scheint sich die Ansicht durchzusetzen, dass Kulturgüter ein nationales kulturelles Erbe darstellen und dass dieses Erbe von historischem Interesse sei. In Zeiten der Krise, des beschleunigten Wandels und der Zukunftsängste steigt der Wert des Alten und der Kultur als Identifikationspunkt einer Gesellschaft: Vielleicht liegt darin eine Parallele zur Gegenwart und eine Erklärung für das Engagement in der Helvetik”

Title: Piazza Novana
Author: Giovanni Battista Piranesi
Year: 1778
Source:

Tags: water, rome, flood, square, representation

Title: The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture
Author: Pier Vittorio Aureli
Year: 2011
Source:

Tags: urbanism, class, architecture, preservation

2025-02-13 16:02

Tags: place, preservation, class, local
Author, Title: Dolores Hayden_The Power of Place

"All of which brings me back to the problem of place. One of the most
powerful strands of independent politics within the cultural mass is to focus
rather strongly on the meaning and qualities of community, nation and
place. The shaping of place identity and local tradition is very much within
the purview of workers within the cultural mass (from the writers of novels
and makers of films to the writers of tourist brochures), and there are
strong institutional forms taken by that shaping (everything from
universities that keep local languages and the sense of local history alive to
museums, cultural events, etc.). The more the cultural mass explores its
own interior values, the more it tends to align itself with a political economy
and a cultural politics of place."

2025-02-07 14:40

Tags: duality, dialectical, city, origin
Author, Title: Manfredo Tafuri_Die Stadt als zersprengte Ordnung

"Wiederum Ordnung und Chaos, Regelmässigkeit und Unregelmässigkeit, Vernunft und Disorganizität; wir sind hier weit entfernt von der spätbarocken Vorschrift der Einheit in der Vielfalt, die in der Spekulation Shaftesburys einen mystischen Klang angenommen hat. Die Kontrolle einer unorganischen Wirklichkeit, die dadurch ausgeübt wird, dass man auf diese Disorganizität einwirkt - nicht um Struktur zu verändern, sondern um ihr eine komplexe Skala gleichzeitig vorhandener Bedeutungen zu entlocken - das ist das Revolutionäre, das die Schriften Laugiers, Piranesis, Milizias und soäter gemässigter im Ton, Quatremere de Quincys in der europäischen Kultur einführen. "

Tags:place, picturesque, consumption

Since the ISOS for Zürich was published in 2016, it has been the subject of significant criticism. On one hand, the inclusion of large parts of the city in the inventory alarmed construction enthusiasts, who feared it would make most development projects nearly impossible. Media reports amplified these concerns with headlines like “75% of the city is under protection,” which drew attention but failed to clarify that protection does not necessarily mean these areas cannot be altered or even demolished. This led to a widespread misconception that the ISOS would block any new developments, with many citing it as a key obstacle in addressing the housing crisis and hindering urban densification efforts.

On the other hand, the bureaucratic hurdles involved in developing within ISOS-listed areas have also drawn criticism. Even the simplest building projects require official appraisals by federal institutions, often causing months-long delays. People argue that involving an institution at such a high level for relatively minor projects—ones that only impact the immediate area—creates unnecessary complications. This has led to frustration over the slow-moving approval process and calls for a more efficient, locally managed system to handle smaller, less impactful projects.

2025-02-13 15:23

Tags: mundane, power, representation, preservation
Author, Title: Wolfgang Scheppe_Die Legislative Erfindung des Stadtbildes

"Die Moderne Denkmalpflege entsteht in der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts: die Güter der Vergangenheit sollen im Interesse nationalen Bewusstseins geschützt werden. Sie werden zu Fetischen der Ideologie des Nationalstaates. 1897 fordert Eduard Paulus, man solle in der Beschreibung der deutschen Kunstlandschaften Monumentales gross hervorheben und breit schildern, Minderwertige aber in den Hintergrund treten lassen. Ein anderer Inventarisator des 19. Jahrhunderts, R.Bergau, meint 1885, praktische Brauchbarkeit von historischen Bauwerken solle bei der Bestandesaufnahme nicht berücksichtig werden. Der Ausgangspunkt ist folgenreich -- bis heute: er verhindert weiterhin immer noch die Erhaltung von Stadtvierteln "kleiner Leute". Diese Viertel haben keine oder nur geringe Statusrepräsentation visueller Art; daher erscheinen ihre Fassaden ärmlich -- im Vergleich zu Patrizierhäuser oder Adelsschlössern."

2025-02-06 11:54

Tags: education, authenticity, novelty, architecture
Author, Title: Rem Koolhaas_Preservation is Overtaking Us

"If preservation is the enabling element of architecture’s cultural currency today, then why not simply expand architecture to include preservation? Why isn’t preservation being taught in the core of every architecture program? Perhaps because “every act of preservation,” as Koolhaas warns, “embodies a revision, a distortion, even a redesign."

2025-02-05 16:02

Tags: preservation, city_planning
Author, Title: Archithese 11 - Denkmalpflege Theorie

""Denkmalpflege" wird in solcher Perspektive zu einem Teilaspekt der "Stadtgestaltung"; beide, Denkmalpflege und Stadtgestaltung warden zu Teilaspekten der "Architektur""

2025-02-05 16:03

Tags: stadtgestalt, preservation, city_planning, stadtbild
Author, Title: Archithese 11 - Denkmalpflege Theorie

"Eine abstrakte Theorie der "Stadtgestalt", die, der konkreten Realität und dem Stand der Disukssion davoneilend, feinschmeckerisch und hochtrabend den Wert einer sich selbst genügenden architektornischen Aesthetik zelebriert, mag in sich schlüssig sein; sie ist nicht "falsch". Aber sie ist unseres Erachtens nicht das Anliegen, das im Hinblick auf die Zukunft unserer Stadtkerne vordringlich ist. Die Herausforderung an die Denkmalpflege der Zukunft ist, hier und jetzt, nicht primär eine architektonische, sondern eine planerische; nicht primär eine Sache der Aesthetik, sondern eine Sache der Politik."

2025-02-15 10:59

Tags: city, historic_city_center, stadtbild, renovation
Author, Title: Michael Müller_Raum-Bild Vermittlung

“Denn wo das Stadtbild als übergreifende Informationsstruktur interpretiert wird, entsteht zwischen dem Einzelobjekt und dem Stadtganzen ein dialektisches Verhältnis, in welchem dem einzelnen Gebäude sein Stellenwert quantitativ und - wie es sich zeigen wird - damit auch qualitativ zugemessen werden kann. Aus heutiger Sicht mag der Versuch, ästhetische Wahrnehmung und Wirkung messbar und damit beweisbar zu machen, noch dazu in einer Zeit, in der die gesellschaftliche Relevanz im Zentrum jeder wissenschaftlichen Auseinandersetzung stand, kurios erscheinen. Er entsprang jedoch dem ernsten Anliegen, auf der Ebene der Stadtbildpflege, die nicht mit dem Landesamt, sondern der Stadt oblag, denkmalpflegerische Ziele wissenschaftlich abzustützen - und blieb natürlich folgenlos. Nicht gesagt wird, dass unter dem Vorwand, ein Vertrautes Bild zu erhalten, eben dieses zerstört wird - immer mit dem Ziel der Vergrösserung der Geschäftsflächen und der Rendite.”

Title: Procession to the Marian shrine in Oberbüren
Author: unknown
Year: 1511
Source: procession, walk

Tags:

2025-02-07 10:43

Tags entertainment, material_culture, education
Author, Title: Raphael Samuel_Theatres of Memory

"In The manner which the arts and crafts movement introduced into English junior schools, knowledge is tested not by chalk and talk but by observational drawing and model building. Learning by seeing is also the great rationale of the countryside interpretation centres, where children, set on such tasks as pond dipping, or asked to exercise their forensic skills on habitat detection , become trained observes of natural history"

2025-02-06 11:27

Tags: mundane, collector, entertainment, education
Author, Title: David Harvey_The History of Heritage

"At the beginning of the chapter I highlighted the inevitable open-endedness of the everyday ‘pieces’ and ‘performances’ of heritage, which it is impossible to date or categorize – the ordinary, conscious and unconscious elaboration and repetition of cultural memory that has both history and prehistory, but which has no beginning or end. These are the ‘small heritages’ that have always existed, but which are rarely celebrated. At one level, heritage today is about: the promotion of a consensus version of history by state-sanctioned cultural institutions and elites to regulate cultural and social tensions in the present. On the other hand, heritage may also be a resource that is used to challenge and redefine received values and identities by a range of subaltern groups (Smith, 2006, 4). While this chapter has necessarily concentrated on providing a narrative history of the ‘big heritage’, we must not forget the small heritages, which do not always have to take the form of overt resistance to officialdom. Indeed, with the present spread of blogs, podcasts and digital archives such as myspace.com and youtube.com on the internet, it is perhaps these small heritages that will form the basis of the material, the thoughts, practices and plans that we pass on to the next generation – our prospective memory if you like. What the next generation will do with this material, this effort and these memories, however – their retrospective memories – is up to them."

Title: Prozession über die Gemüsebrücke
Author: unknown
Year: 1620
Source: Graphische Sammlung der Zürcher Zentralbibliothek

Tags: procession, walk, [[03_tags/rathausbrücke|03_tags/rathausbrücke]], bridge, limmat

Title: Sehnsucht Landschaft
Author: Raimund Rodewald
Year: 2001
Source:

Tags: landscape, collective_eye, protection

Title: Theatres of Memory
Author: Raphael Samuel
Year: 1994
Source:

Tags: memory
class
material_culture
[[muted voices|muted voices]]

Title: Rathausbrücke
Author: unknown
Year: 1711
Source: Baugeschichtliches Archiv

Tags: bridge, zurich, [[03_tags/rathausbrücke|rathausbrücke]]

Title: Reconstruction of Alberti's Map in Descriptio Urbis Romae
Author: Luigi Vagnetti
Year: 1450
Source:

Tags: cartography, objectivity

2025-02-13 16:31

Tags: place, repair, power, stadtbild
Author, Title: Jorge Otero-Pailos_Experimental Preservation

"This collection of bits and pieces from his own writings combined with quotes and extracts leaned from elsewhere was organized by theme, removing the fragments from their original context and creating a new sequence or classification. This restructuring, not unlike the reordering of the city or building, is a three part process:

1. removal or isolation of the fragment from its original context
2. integration of that fragment within a new context
3. reappraisal of the fragment within the new context
   Re-evaluation is an integral part of reconfiguration, for this facilitates the rereading of the fragment, whether written or constructed. Removal and reclassification create an unfamiliarity that encourages the viewer to re-evaluate the significance of the element. The appropriation and reinterpretation of the fragment imbues it with new layers of meaning and exposes the values from a different culture."

Title: Preservation is Overtaking Us
Author: Rem Koolhaas
Year: 2014
Source:

Tags:

2025-02-13 15:54

Tags: repair, labour, capitalism
Author, Title: Jorge Otero-Pailos_Experimental Preservation

"The moment when a caregiver recognizes that their work is not simply technical, but also a way of thinking, raising critical questions about the thing being repaired;"

2025-02-05 15:25

Tags: politics
Author, Title: Kynan Gentry_The Pathos of Conservation

"As the Marxist philosopher and classical scholar George Derwent Thomson argued in his Marxism and Poetry in 1945, ‘This, then, is the first need – to rescue our cultural heritage from the bourgeoisie, to take it over, reinterpret it, adapt it to our needs, renew its vitality by making it thoroughly our own’ (Thomson 1945, 60).Edward Thompson’s William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary (1955), DonaTorr’s Tom Mann and his Times (1956), and Christopher Hill’s famous ‘NormanYoke’ chapter in his Puritanism and Revolution (1958) were early efforts at such reclamation."

2025-02-13 16:23

Tags: procession, urbanism, monument, power, city
Author, Title: Kari Jormakka_Heimlich Manoeuvres

"The procession passe by not only the triumphal arches but many other monuments as well. Indeed, the ceremony commemorated both the entry of the victor and a meeting between Rome and hwer warriors. All romans participated in the event and benefited from the power associated with victory. Hence there was another side to the triumph, the self representation of the city. The procession framed the most important monuments of rome, articulating the formless concentration of buildings as an urbs, an ordered city structure, and conceivably even as roma quadrata. Ritual's role in giving a memorable and understandable order to be congested chaos of rome must be seen in a larger context of roman architecture. In ritual space and time are partitioned in special segment which are declared sacred. Certain actions are cut off from the amorphous flux of activity and designated as meaningful. Analogoulsy in roman urbanism individual buildings, or better yet, individual spaces of ritual activity are cut out of the anonymous and only potentially meaningful urban fabric. "

Title: The Afterlife of Dying Buildings
Author: Ryan Roark
Year: 2016
Source:

Tags: preservation, historicism

Title: Scenographia
Author: Giovanni Battista Piranesi
Year: 1762
Source:

Tags: archive, [[ruin|ruin]], monument, rome, heritage

Title: Statuten
Author: Schweizerischer Heimatschutz
Year: 2018
Source:

Tags: preservation, [[03_tags/heimatschutz|heimatschutz]]

2025-02-13 15:17

Tags: preservation, moral, stadtbild, consumption
Author, Title: Wolfgang Scheppe_Die Legislative Erfindung des Stadtbildes

"Zu Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts hatte Alexander von Humboldt als Erster die Vorstellung der Bewahrungswürdigkeit des architekturhistorischen Monuments auch auf die Phänomene der Natur angewandt. Das hieraus entstandene und schnell etablierte Ideal eines Naturschutzes wurde in einer rekursiven Metapher wieder auf seinen Ursprung zurückbezogen: auf das als gefährdet und also als schutzbedürftig empfundene Baudenkmal, dem die Errichtung eines secteur sauvegardé, eines geschützten Denkmalbereichs galt."

Title: Ghost Stories - The Carrier Bag Theory of Architecture
Author: Sevince Bayrak, Oral Göktas
Year: 2023
Source: ETH Baubibliothek

Tags: heritage, preservation

Title: Stadtbild und Denkmalpflege
Author: Sigrid Brandt and Hans-Rudolf Meier
Year: 2008
Source: ETH Bibliothek

Tags: stadtbild, heritage, preservation, representation, image

Title: Sihl Hochwasser
Author: David Redinger
Year: 1731
Source: unknown

Tags: sihl, limmat, risk, water, landscape

2025-02-05 15:54

Tags: education, museum, representation, identity
Author, Title: Laurajane Smith_Uses of Heritage

"Enlightenment rationality and claims about the possibility of objective truth had overturned medieval religious ideas about the nature of knowledge. The idea of progress took on particular force at this time and both legitimized and reinforced European colonial and imperial expansions and acquisitions in the modern era. Through colonial expansion new dialogues about race developed, and ethnic and cultural identity became firmly linked with concepts of biology or ‘blood’, and Europeans believed themselves to be representative of the highest achievements of human technical, cultural and intellectual progress. Debates over Darwinian evolution had also cemented the social utility and rationality of science, and social Darwinism had further helped to naturalize the conceptual link between identity and race, and the inevitability of European cultural and technical advancement and achievement."

"The desire to propagate these values found synergy with the liberal education movement, whose sense of pastoral care identified a moral responsibility to educate the public about their civic and national duties, and to promote social stability by fostering a sense of national community and social responsibility. As Walsh (1992: 30) argues, museums developed as a consequence of the modern condition and narratives of progress, rationality and national and cultural identity became embedded in exhibition and collection practices. Museums took on a regulatory role in helping to establish and govern both social and national identity, and the existence of national collections demonstrated the achievements and superiority of the nation that possessed them (Bennet 1995; Macdonald 2003; Diaz-Andreu under review)."

2025-02-09 12:00

Tags: quasi-object, preservation, culture, society, heritage, doubt
Author, Title: Jorge Otero-Pailos_Experimental Preservation

Heritage objects by definition represent not individual preferences but collective choices; and in their choice of objects, experimental preservationists do not attempt to speak for culture but rather to solicit a cultural response. With Ramberg's example in mind, we can further unpack just how this cultural response is articulated; we can begin by turning to sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, who described cultural production as a social game in which each player (the master, the student, the critic, etc.) has a specific position, and in which each interaction is governed by specific rules and possible moves. The key point is that we can step into and out of these positions. In the morning a Native American might put on her traditional dress and participate in a ceremonial ritual; then change into jeans and spend the afternoon shopping at the regional mall. What Bourdieu's analysis didn't dwell upon, but what we might add, is a focus on the importance of objects - the dress, the jeans - in enabling us to move from one cultural position to another. Just as without the soccer ball there is no game, without objects there is no field of cultural production.

Title: Stadtplan Zürich
Author: unknown
Year: 1644
Source: Stadt Zürich

Tags: zurich, cartography, citywalls, fortification

Title: Erste Hilfe
Author: Stanislaus von Moos
Year: 2021
Source: ETH Bibliothek

Tags: zurich, switzerland, heimat

2025-02-20 17:07

Tags: politics, landscape, education, heimat
Author, Title: Schweizerischer Heimatschutz_Statuten

"I. Grundlagen

Art. 1
1. Unter dem Namen «Schweizer Heimatschutz» (SHS), im Folgenden «SHS», besteht ein im Handelsregister eingetragener Verein im Sinne von Art. 60ff. ZGB.
2. Der SHS gliedert sich in Sektionen.
3. Der SHS und seine Sektionen sind parteipolitisch und konfessionell unabhängig.
4. Der Sitz befindet sich am Ort der Geschäftsstelle.
Art. 2
Der SHS betrachtet alle Aspekte des Bauens und der Landschafts- gestaltung als kulturelle Handlungen von öffentlichem Interesse. Er verfolgt seine Ziele in allen Regionen der Schweiz und setzt sich ein für:
1. den Schutz, die Pflege und die angemessene Nutzung von Baudenkmälern, Ortsbildern, Kulturlandschaften sowie anderen kultur- und naturhistorischen Zeugnissen;
2. eine nachhaltige und qualitativ hochwertige Raumordnung und Siedlungsentwicklung;
3. die sorgfältige Planung, Gestaltung und Umsetzung von Bauten, Anlagen und weiteren raumwirksamen Tätigkeiten;
4. zielverwandte Bestrebungen im Bereich des Landschafts-, Natur- und Umweltschutzes und der Denkmalpflege;
5. einen schonenden Umgang mit Ressourcen.

II. Tätigkeit
Art. 3
Zu diesem Zweck widmet sich der SHS vor allem folgenden Aufgaben und Tätigkeiten:
1. Er bestimmt die Grundsätze für die Tätigkeit des Vereins;
2. er koordiniert und unterstützt die Arbeit der Sektionen;
3. er vertritt seine Anliegen in der Öffentlichkeit;
4. er prägt die Meinungsbildung und fördert den Austausch zwischen der Bevölkerung, den Behörden und der Fachwelt;
5. er wirkt auf die Gesetzgebung ein und nutzt die Volksrechte; Name, Aufbau und Sitz Zweck Aufgaben und Tätigkeiten
6. er ergreift gegebenenfalls Rechtsmittel, um den Vereinszielen zum Durchbruch zu verhelfen;
7. er orientiert und berät in Bau-, Planungs- und Rechtsfragen;
8. er pflegt die Zusammenarbeit mit zielverwandten Organisationen, Behörden und Privatper sonen;
9. er äussert sich zu wissenschaftlichen Themen, engagiert sich für Inventarisationen und fördert das Handwerk;
10. er verbreitet seine Anliegen an Bildungs- und Weiterbildungsveranstaltungen sowie über geeignete Kommunikationsmittel, namentlich Publikationen;
11. er verleiht Preise und kann Beiträge gewähren;
12. er kann Gesellschaften oder andere Organisationen jeglicher Rechtsform gründen oder errichten, solchen beitreten oder Beteiligungen daran erwerben, halten und veräussern;
13. er kann Grundeigentum erwerben, halten, instand stellen und veräussern. "

2025-02-06 11:59

Tags: reproduction, restoration,tradition
Author, Title: Jorge Otero-Pailos_Preservation is Overtaking Us

"The technique of supplementation stems from a very long preservation tradition, dating back to the 1840s, concerned with substituting architecture with its own likeness, only slightly improved. Think, for example, of Eugène Viollet-le-Duc’s famous substitution, between 1840 and 1859, of the column capitals inside the abbey church of Ste.-Marie-Madeleine in Vézelay, France with (nearly) exact copies carved by master masons with medieval tools. The old capitals were deemed structurally deficient, incapable of carrying the load required of them, and therefore in need of supplementation, which in this case meant substituting them with replicas."

2025-02-06 12:01

Tags: restoration, future, authenticity, ethic
Author, Title: Jorge Otero-Pailos_Preservation is Overtaking Us

"Viollet-le-Duc saw restoration as being in the service of some allegorical entity, an ideal independent of time—‘The word restoration and the thing itself are modern: to restore a building is not to maintain it, repair it, or rebuild it; it is to reestablish it in a complete state that might never have existed at any given moment’."

2025-02-07 11:00

Tags: tactics, strategy, urbanism, heimat, aesthetic
Author, Title: Martin Viehhauser_Reformierung des Menschen durch Stadtraumgestaltung

"Das Handlungsmuster der Sozialreform wird verständlich auf dem Hintergrund dieses Elements: der Wirkmacht der Vorstellungen von Ordnung. Diese Vorstellungen – mit Durkheim die Voraussetzung, um im Kontext der Stadtraumgestaltung den Begriff ›Erziehung‹ fruchtbar zu machen – zielen auf die Vermittlung zwischen Individuum und Gesellschaft im Hinblick auf die Zukunftsdimension der Sicherung des gesellschaftlichen Funktionierens. Die wahrgenommene Notwendigkeit, dieses Verhältnis organisieren zu müssen, erschien in dem Moment als dringlich, in dem die traditionellen gesellschaftlichen und kulturellen
Formen als in Zerstörung begriffen betrachtet wurden. Sie wurde innerhalb der wissensbasierten Aufassung handlungswirksam, die die gesellschaftliche Lage als in Unordnung geraten charakterisierte: Pflüger stellte entsprechend eine allgemeine »Kalamität« der moralischen Verhältnisse fest. Die Asymmetrie zwischen denjenigen, die die Räume einrichteten und anordneten (was nicht einzig als Handlungen von Akteuren, sondern, Foucault folgend, als eine Beziehung von Wissen und Macht zu verstehen ist10), und denjenigen, die in diesen Räumen wohnen und arbeiten, verdeutlicht de Certeaus Unterscheidung von Taktik und Strategie: Strategisches Handeln ist die machtvolle Besetzung des Raums, der die Parameter absteckt, in der sich die »Bevölkerung« bewegen kann.11 Siedlungsbauten als malerische Dörfer anzulegen, sie über den Stadtraum zu verteilen und eine als ›echt‹ und ›ehrlich‹ verstandene heimatliche Architektursprache umzusetzen, bedeutete, die Parameter zu definieren, innerhalb derer die Bewohnerinnen und Bewohner der Stadt die Verhaltensweisen ausgestalten und ihr Selbstverständnis als Mitglieder einer zivilen Öffentlichkeit formieren konnten – so zumindest die »Hoffnungen«. Auch wenn Aneignungsprozesse in dieser Studie nicht im Fokus standen, verdeutlicht die moralerzieherische Strategie, dass der Raum ein in Machtverhältnissen verstrickter und in einer politischen Sphäre sozial und kulturell ›gemachter‹ Raum ist; es ist in diesem vorstrukturierten Raum, in dem sich die »taktischen« Manöver der Alltagsnutzung realisieren"

2025-02-07 14:56

Tags: heritage, politics, moral
Author, Title: Michel Foucault_The Archaeology of Knowledge

"The archive is first the law of what can be said, the system that
governs the appearance of statements as unique events. But the
archive is also that which determines that all these things said do
not accumulate endlessly in an amorphous mass, nor are they
inscribed in an unbroken linearity, nor do they disappear at the
mercy of chance external accidents; but they are grouped together
in distinct figures, composed together in accordance with multiple
relations, maintained or blurred in accordance with specific
regularities; that which determines that they do not withdraw at
the same pace in time, but shine, as it were, like stars, some that
seem close to us shining brightly from far off, while others that are
in fact close to us are already growing pale."

2025-02-13 15:35

Tags: recycle, mundane, aesthetic
Author, Title: Manfredo Tafuri_The Sphere and the Labyrinth

"We have repeatedly stressed, in the course of this book, how much work­ing with degraded materials, with refuse and fragments extracted from the banality of everyday life, is an integral part of the tradition of modern art : a magical act of transforming the formless into aesthetic objects through which the artist realizes the longed-for repatriation in the world of things. It is no wonder, then, that the most strongly felt condition, today, belongs to those who realize that, in order to salvage specific values for architec­ ture, the only .course is to make use of "battle remnants, " that is, to redeploy what has been discarded on the battlefield that has witnessed the defeat of the avant-garde. Thus the new "knights of purity" advance onto the scene of the present debate brandishing as banners the fragments of a utopia that they themselves cannot confront head-on. The avant-garde en­ trenches itself al l over again in nostalgia, and the about-face we have wit­ nessed in the last works of Eisenstein returns to become a present-day reality.
"

2025-02-07 11:51

Tags: urbanism, education, class, aesthetic
Author, Title: Archithese_Heim und Heimat

"Die «Privatisierung» ästhetischer, sozialer und politischer Fragen, die sich in einer oberflächlichen Grossstadtkritik niederschlug-oberflächlich, weil die ökonomischen Prozesse als Ursache der Stadtentwicklung entweder nicht gesehen oder allein auf das Grosskapital zurückgeführt wurden-, hatte zur Folge, dass eigentlich nur im Wohnbereich Änderungen durchgeführt wurden. Der Glaube an die Macht der ästhetischen Erziehung erwies sich aber ebenso als Illusion wie der Versuch, gesellschaftliche Probleme mit sozialtechnischen Mitteln lösen zu wollen («Heimstätten»). Die Verbreitung des Eigenheims beweist aber, wie einflussreich die ideologischen und architektonischen Heimatschutzbewegung Grundlagen der noch sind. Forderungen nach Qualität der baulichen Gestaltung und Erhaltung der regionalen und lokalen architektonischen Eigenarten sind nach wie vor aktuell."

2025-02-28 10:19

Tags: cartography, labour, ideology
Author, Title: Jane Jacobs_Edge of Empire

Maps are preeminently the language of power not of protest.

2025-02-07 11:19

Tags: idealisation, fortification, city, rural
Author, Title: Christian Schmid_Zur Kritik der Stadtentwicklung

"Ein erster Bezugspunkt der Ideologie der “Stadt” ist die politische Stadt des Mittelalters. Für die Beschreibung und Erklärung der Entwicklung von mittelalterlichen Städten ist es durchaus zweckmässig und sinnvoll, “Stadt” und “Land” analytisch zu trennen und die Stadt als wirtschaftliche, politische und kulturelle Einheit aufzufassen."

Title: The City of Zurich
Author: Georg Braun and FranzHogenberg
Year: 1581
Source:

Tags: zurich, plan, limmat, [[]]

2025-02-07 10:47

Tags: tactics, strategy, mundane, class, collective_eye, heimat, kitsch
Author, Title: Los Angeles County Museum of Art_Words Without Pictures

"I’m going to show two bodies of work, and I’m going to quote from Sze Tsung Leong’s essay “A Picture You Already Know.” He wrote in the last sentence of the essay, “Repetition suggests that views are never singular; each time we look we see something different.” I’d like to take the position that repetition suggests that views are never singular, but that each time we look we see with a collective eye. I’m thinking about Milan Kundera’s idea of kitsch. Kundera writes, “The feeling induced by kitsch must be the kind the multitudes can share. Kitsch may not there-fore depend on an unusual situation unless derived from the basic images people have engraved in their memories: the ungrateful daughter, the neglected father, children running the grass, the motherland betrayed, first love.” “Kitsch causes two tears...” I love this. “Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: ‘How nice to see children running in the grass.’ The second tear says: ‘How nice to be moved together with all of mankind by children running in the grass.’ It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch.” Kitsch is what has been expressed so many times that it becomes familiar, or comforting, or reassuring. Thinking about kitsch in those terms doesn’t have to be judgmental. We can put aside the idea of kitsch as a critique of taste or a critique of class identity, and think about it in terms of familiarity and the phenomenological aspect that it is us. It is to be in the world with all of man-kind. With this in mind, if we understand that society forms how and what we see, and then also that the photographic systems that we use are part of that formation, we have to look at photography and understand our relationship to it in regards to those formations. The reason I’m showing these works is that I’m dealing with collecting—how photography is used and what people do with photography."

2025-02-05 15:33

Tags: historic_city_center, legislation, monument, commercial
Author, Title: Wolfgang Scheppe_Die Legislative Erfindung des Stadtbildes

"Mit der in den 1960er-Jahren unter dem damaligen Kultusminister André Malraux im Marais vollzogenen Ausweitung des Denkmalbegriffs auf private Wohnbauten und ihren baulichen Zusammenhang wurde die urbane Immobilienentwicklung als Geschäftsfeld des grossen Finanzkapitals entdeckt. Hierzu zählt sowohl die Vermarktung des historischen Stadtzentrums als semantisierte Kulisse bürgerlicher Sentimentalität als auch die Ökonomisierung des sozialen Wohnungsbaus durch die Errichtung der Massenwohnanlagen der Banlieus, die der Staat mit legislative Mitteln als Quelle privatwirtschaftlicher Gewinne und Ort der Deportation einer marginalisierten Population errichtete."

2025-02-15 12:18

Tags: [[03_tags/ensemble|ensemble]], monument, tourist
Author, Title: Wolfgang Scheppe_Die Architektur als Verdinglichung

“Das “Ensemble” eine spät gefasste Anschauung des Denkmalschutzideals, das ja im Gegensatz zum oft beiläufig geopferten älteren Baukontext zunächst auschliesslich dem freigestellten singulären Monument galt - ist nur das Konstrukt ästhetischen Wohlwollens, das absieht von aller tatsächlichen kunsthistorischer Heterogenität. Exemplarisch begenet dies in Venedig, wo es nur der Sentimentalität touristischer Ignoranz zukommt, aus der Patina des Verfalls unproblematisch eine alles überdeckende atmosphärische Einheit aus neun jahrhunderten diskontinuierlicher Baugeschichte und Baugeschichten zu fingieren. Was als städtebauliche Geschlossenheit herausgegriffen wird, ist tatsächlich lediglich eine Betrachtungsweise, die die ästhetische Empfindung von Atmosphäre als Prädikat des Objektiven naturalisiert.”

2025-02-13 15:33

Tags: politics, architecture, heritage
Author, Title: Manfredo Tafuri_The Sphere and the Labyrinth

"Architecture as politics is by now such an exhausted myth that it is pointless to waste anymore words on it. But if Power-like the institu­tions in which it incarnates itself- "speaks many dialects," the analysis of the "collision" among these dialects must then be the object of historiogra­phy. The construction of a physical space is certainly the site of a "battle": a proper urban analysis demonstrates this clearly. That such a battle is not totalizing, that it leaves borders, remains, residues, is also an indisputable fact. And thus a vast field of investigation is opened up-an investigation of the limits of languages, of the boundaries of techniques, of the thresh­olds "that provide density." The threshold, the boundary, the limit all "define": it is in the nature of such definition that the object so circum­scribed immediately becomes evanescent. The possibility of constructing the history of a formal language comes about only by destroying, step by step, the linearity of that history and its autonomy: there will remain only traces, fluctuating signs, unhealed rifts. The "knight's move" can be historicized as a "game" complete in itself, finite, and therefore tautologi­cal. The "many languages" of the forms thus lead us to discover that the limit of the forms themselves does not contain monads casually floating in their "divine" self-transformation. The boundary line-that which the rig­orous formalism of Shklovsky, author of the Theory of Prose or of Fiedler and Riegl has so skillfully traced around the verbal and figurative arts-is there to mark the points of impact that determine the interaction of signi­fying practices with power practices endowed with their own specific techniques."

2025-02-06 11:45

Tags: education, entertainment, class, museum
Author, Title: Rem Koolhaas_Preservation is Overtaking Us

"Preservation was, for Mikhailovskii, the continuous framing and reframing of a visitor’s aesthetic experience of architecture, such that they would come away with the sense that the building was culturally important. This work of mediation had to constantly adapt to changing cultural attitudes. Because they could not change the building’s form to achieve this goal, preservationists had to expand their toolkit beyond building techniques and began working with other aesthetic techniques such as guided tours, interpretive films, night illumination, and more recently, enhanced reality portable software applications."

2025-02-07 11:20

Tags: class, urbanism, public, global, local
Author, Title:

"Wer zum Beispiel die Anonymität, die Oberflächlichkeit und das Nützlichkeitsprinzip der gesellschaftlichen Beziehungen in urbanen Räumen auf die Ausdehnung der “Städte” zurückführt, vollzieht einen historischen Kurzschluss. Denn die eigentliche Ursache dieser vielbeklagten Tendenzen ist nicht einfach der “Moloch Stadt”, sondern es ist der veränderte Produktionsprozess, der zu einer zunehmenden Atomisierung der gesellschaftlichen Strukturen führt. Die Verbindung von “Stadtkultur” mit der Urbanisierung verschweigt den tatsächlichen Zusammenhang mit der Entwicklung des kapitalistischen Weltsystems."

2025-02-14 16:53

Tags: city_planning, history, subjectivity
Author, Title: Manfredo Tafuri_The Sphere and the Labyrinth

“The destruction of language as grammaire raisonnée is achieved. The plates of the Cammini are the fruit of a reduction to zero of architectural constructivity: the richness of the sources and the cult of contamination join in the refusal to render the sources studied really “ historical.” Bricolage is, as we know, among the most corrosive forms of antihistoricism. In this sphere, everything is now permitted and everything is recoverable. The subjective experience, which refounds history by its research, is forced to travel once more over that history which is like a labyrinth without exits: the heterotopia and the “ voyage” are locked in a desperate embrace.”

2025-02-07 11:07

Tags: language, collector, city, moral, virtual
Author, Title: Manfredo Tafuri_The Sphere and the Labyrinth

"The destruction of language as grammaire raisonnee is achieved. The plates of the Cammini are the fruit of a reduction to zero of architectural constructivity: the richness of the sources and the cult of contaminatio join in the refusal to render the sources studied really “ historical.” Bricolage is, as we know, among the most corrosive forms of antihistoricism. In this sphere, everything is now permitted and everything is recoverable. The subjective experience, which refounds history by its research, is forced to travel once more over that history which is like a labyrinth without exits: the heterotopia and the “ voyage” are locked in a desperate embrace."

2025-02-15 10:23

Tags: [[03_tags/heimatschutz|heimatschutz]], heimat, landscape, education, landscape
Author, Title: Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani_Die Modernität des Dauerhaften

"Das Bürgertum als Träger des frühen Heimatschutzes in der Schweiz. Bürgertum lässt sich am besten als bürgerliche Kultur fassen, die bei der (Re-)Produktion von Wissen in Büchern und Zeitschriften, in der Architektur oder im Landschaftsschutz nicht bloss repräsentiert, sondern erst eigentlich hervorgebracht wird."

2025-02-14 16:59

Tags: class, social_control, society
Author, Title: Laurajane Smith_Uses of Heritage

“The emergence of a mercantile middle class as feudalism gave way to capitalism had also destabilized the political and economic role of the aristocracy. All in all, the nineteenth century may be characterized as a period that called for new devices to ensure or express social cohesion and identity and to structure social relations.”

2025-02-05 15:59

Tags: archaeology, material_culture, ethic
Author, Title: Laurajane Smith_Uses of Heritage

"Professional architects and the newly emergent discipline of archaeology were significant in the history of the development of these acts. Archaeology, particularly in England and the United States, pressed its case for status as an intellectual endeavour through its claims of stewardship over prehistoric sites and monuments in public debates around the development of these acts (Carman 1996; Smith 2004). Both architecture and archaeology, due to their ability to claim professional expertise over material culture, took on a pastoral role in identifying the appropriate monuments to be protected under these acts, and in caring for and protecting these places. Educating the public about the value and meaning of historic buildings and monuments also became embedded in a sense of a ‘conservation ethic’ that to disseminate these values was to ensure greater conservation awareness and appreciation of a nation’s cultural heritage."

2025-02-13 15:07

Tags: urbanism, cartography, objectivity, preservation
Author, Title: Pier Vittorio Aureli_The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture

"The culture of Enlightenment challenged antiquarian erudition with the idea of archaeological knowledge. Ancient ruins were not simply evidence of a past to be preserved, but were also formal examples to be recomposed according to the narrative of power. Distinct from this analogical reconstruction of the past, archaeology was embraced by the Enlightenment as a scientific reconstruction of the past; cartography arose as a fundamental manifestation of scientific knowledge in the urban culture of seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Within the evolution of cartographic knowledge archaeology advanced as the principal mode of scientific investigation of the ancient world. For this reason, the Instauratio Urbis was now begun in the name of scientific accuracy. The new cartographic surveys and the new wave of interest in antiquity were now perceived not only within the framework of humanist erudition but also within the new scientific ethos of cartographic research."

2025-02-07 14:36

Tags: urbanism, architecture, archaeology, future
Author, Title: Manfredo Tafuri_Die Stadt als zersprengte Ordnung

"Die Ordnung im Einzelnen führt damit nicht einfach nur zum tumulte dans l'ensemble, sondern zu einem wilden wuchern von bedeutungslosen Symbolen. In Piranesis foresta wie in der sadistischen Atmosphäre seiner carceri zeigt sich, dass nicht nur das Träumen der Vernunft Monströses hervorbringen kann, sondern auch die wache Vernunft zur Deformation führen kann: auch wenn ihr Ziel das Erhabene ist.
Man kann in dem Kritizismus des Marsfeldes von Piranesi etwas Prophetisches sehen. Er scheint mit bekümmerter eindringlichkeit auf die Gefahr hinzuweisen, die in dem damals stattfinden Verlust des Ideals des Organischen als Handlungs- und Urteilsmasstab liegt. Die architektur mag sich auf den Tafeln Piranesis noch so bemühen für sich selbst eine Vollkommenheit zu bewahren, die sie vor der totalen Auflösung schützt. Diese Anstrengung wird doch vereitelt von der assemblage architektonischer Stücke in der Stadt, die sie mitleidlos aufsaugt und jeglicher Autonomie beraubt: es hilft nichts, dass sie sich beharrlich um wohlgegliederte und komponierte Figuration bemühen. "

2025-02-07 13:39

Tags: image, future, urbanism, virtual, landmark
Author, Title: Michael Müller_Raum-Bild Vermittlung

"Die Stadt im Bild: eine Möglichkeitsform; das wäre vielleicht die Formulieren, mit der man aus kunsthistorischer perspektive das Stadtbild in sein eigenes Recht einsetzen könnte. Michael Müller hat jüngst daran erinnert, dass die production von Wunschbildern einer synthetisierenden Wahrnehmung rapide zunehme, Bilder die in ihrer Eindeutigkeit der Komplexität der neuen Stadt gerecht werden sollen. [...] Die Stadt insbesondere die europäische Stadt als ein auf Zukünftiges ausgerichtetes Projekt zu denken und zu entwickeln, war immer angewiesen auf die Kraft der Fähigkeit, sich ein Bild zu machen, Bilder zu imaginieren [...]
Dass die Wiedergabe der Stadt allein den Gesetzen des Malerischen oder zeichnerischen gehorche und also kaum zur verlässlichen Wiedergabe der Wirklichkeit tauge, daran hat schon einer der frühesten Protagonisten des Stadt-Bild-Diskurs keinen Zweifel gehabt. Leon battista alberti zwischen 1430 und 1450 entstandene, nur vierseitige Schrift Descriptio Urbis romae ist ein ebenso frühes wie untrügliches Zeugnis dieser Skepsis. Albertis gesamtes oeuvre kommt nahezu ohne Bilder aus. Das ist nicht etwa einer mangelnden Begabung oder einer prekären Überlieferung geschuldet. Es ist Ausdruck einer Strategie. Damit geräte der (alphanumerische) Text zum sich selbst-aussprechenden Gegenstand, der keiner weiteren Ergänzung durch das Bild oder Diagramm bedurfte. Damit reagierte Alberti auf den ihm noch nicht zur Verfügung stehende Buchdruck. Erst dieser erlaubte ja eine verlässliche, unkontaminierte Verbreitung des Wissens und zudem die unverfälschliche Reproduktion des Bildes in der Druckgrafik."

2025-02-07 15:09

Tags: archive, place, identity, discourse
Author, Title:

"The archive of a society, a culture, or a civilization cannot be
described exhaustively: or even, no doubt, the archive of a whole
period. On the other hand, it is not possible for us to describe our
own archive, since it is from within these rules that we speak, since
it is that which gives to what we can say – and to itself, the object of
our discourse – its modes of appearance, its forms of existence and
coexistence, its system of accumulation, historicity, disappearance.
The archive cannot be described in its totality; and in its presence
it is unavoidable. It emerges in fragments, regions, levels."

2025-02-07 11:02

Tags: education, image, patina, politics
Author, Title: Martin Viehhauser_Reformierung des Menschen durch Stadtraumgestaltung

"Eine wissensgeschichtliche Erziehungsgeschichte, die nach Formen fragt, die ›Erziehung‹ unter bestimmten zeitlichen und lokalen Bedingungen annimmt, richtet den Blick auf Oberflächen, auf denen sich Erziehung in Handlungen, Anordnungen und Dingen materialisiert. Eine solche Geschichte benötigt eine Darstellung, die Schichten und Ebenen als Ermöglichungsbedingungen in den Blick nimmt und nicht von einem Anfangs- und Endpunkt ausgeht."

2025-02-07 11:26

Tags: ideology, politics, expansion, city, fortification, class
Author, Title: Christian Schmid_Zur Kritik der Stadtentwicklung

"Im Bereich der Politik fliesst die Stadt-Ideologie überall dort ein, wo es darum geht, mit der Realisierung von konkreten Projekten oder der Durchsetzung von Gesetzen und Massnahmenden Prozess der Urbanisierung ein Stück weit voranzutreiben. Und dies trifft vor allem für die Planung zu. Der regionale Gesamtplan der Stadt Zürich, der im Dezember 1983 von den Stadtzürchern zum zweiten Mal verworfen wurde, beruht nicht auf einem regionalen, geschweige denn auf einem gesamtgesellschaftlichen Denken. So umfasst die Planungsregion Zürich nur eine einzige Gemeinde: die Stadt Zürich in den Grenzen von 1934. Eine Regionalplanung, welche die gesamte Agglomeration Zürich umfasst, existiert nicht. Obwohl Zürich für die Schweiz einen ähnlichen Stellenwert hat wie Paris für Frankreich und obwohl die Auswirkungen des unkontrollierten Urbanisierungsprozesses unübersehbar sind, ist die Diskussion über eine dritte Eingemeindung (oder andere, weniger einschneidende Massnahmen zur Anpassung des politischen Systems an die wirtschaftlichen Realitäten) tabu: Zürichs Grenzenlosigkeit würde ins grelle Licht der Realität gezerrt, wenn über die Eingemeindung des aargauischen Spreitenbach abgestimmt werden müsste."

2025-02-13 15:44

Tags: urbanism, idealisation, architecture
Author, Title: Jorge Otero-Pailos_Experimental Preservation

"The smooth running of all social mechanisms, whether in the literary field or in the field of power, depends on the existence of the illusio, the interest, the investment, in both an economic and psychological sense "

2025-02-07 11:49

Tags: collective_eye, identity, place, public
Author, Title: Wolfgang Scheppe_Die Architektur als Verdinglichung

"Es war wiederum Simmel der zuerst darlegte, dass jedes Einheitsdenken von Raum, also der Landschaft und des Stadtbildes, ein kognitives und soziales Konstrukt einer vergesellschafteten Bewwustein st. Im blossen Kontinuum des Raums eine Identität der Atmosphäre festhalten zu wollen, ist eine Leistung er Vorstellung."

2025-02-14 17:31

Tags: [[03_tags/nostalgia|nostalgia]], present, archaeology, restoration
Author, Title: Paul Philippot_Historic Preservation, Philosophy, Criteria, Guidelines

“This romantic nostalgia of the past, which replaced the traditional continuity between the past and the present, combines historicism and nationalism and has led, since the end of the eighteenth century, not only to various revivals of past styles of art and architecture but also to an unfortunate confusion of preservation and reconstruction. A scientific archaeological approach to the past and nationalistic revival are closely interwoven in Eugène Viollet-le-Duc’s theory and in all nineteenth-century restoration work in Europe, where these ideas have not yet died out completely. Modern nationalism also seems to foster revivals and reconstructions in most young countries that have recently become independent. In the meantime, however, the scientific approach to the past has surpassed national borders and now considers products of all cultures as part of one cultural patrimony of mankind. Living contact with this patrimony can no longer be achieved in revivals—nor, consequently, in reconstructions based on the symbolic value given to a style of the past by romantic nationalism. It can be achieved only through a new approach that will acknowledge simultaneously the uniqueness of every creation of the past and the distance from which it is appreciated in the present. John Ruskin was the first to express a full awareness of the consequences of this break in the continuity of tradition introduced by the development of the modern historical consciousness.”

2025-02-07 11:45

Tags: identity, place, global, local
Author, Title:

"In Anlehnung an den französischen Stadtforscher Manuel Castells lässt sich postulieren: Die weltweite Urbanisierung bedeutet den tendentiellen Wegfall des Raumes als einer Quelle der Eigentümlichkeit. Die Urbanisierung ist ein universeller Prozess, der letztlich alle Lebensbereiche erfasst. Die urbanen Gebiete nähern sich weltweit einer alles überdeckenden Gleichförmigkeit an, sie verfügen mehr und mehr über eine einheitliche Raummöblierung und ein standardisiertes Styling. Dieser Prozess verschont auch die Lebensweise oder den Alltag der urbanen Bevölkerung nicht, die
zunehmend normiert und nivelliert werden."

2025-02-10 12:16

Tags: class, collective_eye, aesthetic, kitsch
Author, Title: Gary Tedman_Origins of Kitsch

"Emancipation from the European feudal system began in the eleventh and twelfth
centuries. The division of labor in French artistic production governed by monasteries
was not apparent until the twelfth-century emergence of the craft guild. At this time,
the laity was permitted to enter monastic schools and art became scattered
throughout the secular world. As a result, the religious and monarchical authorities
started to lose their grip on the activities of artists, and artworks became increasingly
portable.
With the rise of capitalism, the industrial production of artist’s materials increased
and became more widely available. Commissions for artworks began to occur beyond church and court. The more the old guilds lost artistic integrity, and the more artists became freed from the defunct but also relatively secure church and court ties, the
more artists plied their trade via the new state educational institutions. In fact, the
separation of the intellectual and artistic faculties of production from manual or craft
labor, and the transformation of those faculties into powers exercised by capital over
labor, also led to the increasing centralization of aesthetic power in the state, which
could now control the process of art and design education more directly.
With the accumulating numbers of the working class entering the affray, however,
and the increasingly merciless use of the state’s repressive forces in defense of the
new instruments of exploitation, the rising sharpness of conflict and obviousness of
class warfare meant the fledgling bourgeois state had to urgently revise its widely
accepted image as an imperious force for the simple maintenance of the feudal order.
Eventually, on this account, these changes demanded new kinds, and new branches,
of state apparatus*/in this case, art ‘‘Aesthetic State Apparatuses’’ (ASAs): new or
reformed art institutions able to underpin the new sentiments on and for the
aesthetic level of practice."

2025-02-13 15:03

Tags: preservation, urbanism, politics
Author, Title: Pier Vittorio Aureli_The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture

"A fundamental architectural aspect of the sixteenth-century Roman surveys was the analysis of monuments within their topographic locations, just as the Mirabilia Urbis Romae guidebook envisioned ancient buildings as related to their positions in the space of the city. Instauratio Urbis offered an interpretation of architectural form radically different from the one inherited from architectural treatises. Especially in treatises made in the sixteenth-century, the understanding of the ancient architecture focused on the use of the five orders. Yet in the several phases of Instauratio Urbis the knowledge of architectural form was defined more by the individual form of each artifact in relationship to its topographical position in the city than the use of orders. Moreover, the survey of ancient monuments made clear to architects that the variety of compositional orders was irreducible to Vitruvius's rules. The Instauratio Urbis was often depicted in the form of city map in which the form of the city was represented as an archipelago of monuments."

Tags: rural, disorientation, heimat, education, tradition, switzerland

With the inevitable arrival of rapid change in the cities and its destructive power over familiar patterns of behaviour, city dwellers lost their point of view from which to judge these rapid discontinuities. At the time, only the Heimatschutz offered itself as the bearer of an urban planning and aesthetic direction. It was a movement of city dwellers in favour of the countryside, initially for the great sceneries, then also for the nature of rural life, the village, perhaps even the romantic small town.

An impressive achievement remains the description of the symptoms and consequences of the new production relations and industrial production conditions: the aesthetic impoverishment and leveling of the built environment, the destruction of urban and landscape images, as well as the effects of mass transportation. However, since the Heimatschutz movement understood itself as a “middle-class” movement and saw itself as a “mediator between capital and labor,” it sought to improve living conditions primarily through a transformation of form, rather than a change in production methods. This, in turn, legitimized and even concealed or homogenized the driving forces behind these rapid changes. Heimatstil was therefore the cladding of hotels, spas, bathing establishments, railway stations or villas with sparse rural motifs (or those that were considered to be such), which, however, did not change the basic character of these new, sometimes brutal and rigorous building types.

A significant feature of the Heimatschutz was its deep connection with the social and moral values of the time. It was not only about preserving buildings but also about shaping society through architecture. The schoolhouse, for example, was seen as a “silent co-educator,” playing a role in the moral and aesthetic upbringing of the youth. This focus on the educational potential of architecture was part of a broader attempt to instill patriotic and traditional values in the population​.

2025-02-14 17:34

Tags: monument, restoration
Author, Title: John Ruskin_The Seven Lamps of Architecture

“Neither by the public, nor by those who have the care of public monuments, is the true meaning of the word restoration understood. It means the most total destruction which a building can suffer: a destruction out of which no remnants can be gathered: a destruction accompanied with false description of the thing destroyed. [...] It is impossible, as impossible as to raise the dead, to restore anything that has ever been great or beautiful in architecture. That which I have above insisted upon as the life of the whole, that spirit which is given only by the hand and eye of the workman, can never be recalled. Another spirit may be given by another time, and it is then a new building; but the spirit of the dead workman cannot be summoned up, and commanded to direct other hands, and other thoughts. [...] There was yet in the old some life, some mysterious suggestion of what it had been, and of what it had lost; some sweetness in the gentle lines which rain and sun had wrought.”

2025-02-13 15:20

Tags: aesthetic, [[03_tags/ensemble|ensemble]], objectivity
Author, Title: Wolfgang Scheppe_Die Legislative Erfindung des Stadtbildes

"Man kann dies mit der Etablierung des Genrebegriffs "Landschaft" in der holländischen Malerei vergleichen, mit dem erst die Natur in den Blick ästhetischer Anteilnahme rückte. Ebenso fügt sich in der Stadtlandschaft ein Ensemble als vermeintliche architekturhistorische Einheit einzig dem subjektiven Wohlgefallen. Es ist aber keine Einheit, kein Identisches. Eine solche Projektion von Subjektivität auf ihren Gegenstand begriff John Ruskin als "pathetic fallacy" und dieser Fehler findet sich auch hier: Das "Ensemble" eine spät gefasste Anschauung des Denkmalschutzideals, das ja im Gegensatz zum oft beiläufig geopferten älteren Baukontext zunächst auschliesslich dem freigestellten singulären Monument galt - ist nur das Konstrukt ästhetischen Wohlwollens, das absieht von aller tatsächlichen kunsthistorischer Heterogenität. Exemplarisch begenet dies in Venedig, wo es nur der Sentimentalität touristischer Ignoranz zukommt, aus der patina des Verfalls unproblematisch eine alles überdeckende atmosphärische Einheit aus neun jahrhunderten diskontinuierlicher Baugeschichte und Baugeschichten zu fingieren. Was als städtebauliche Geschlossenheit herausgegriffen wird, ist tatsächlich lediglich eine Betrachtungsweise, die die ästhetische Empfindung von Atmosphäre als Prädikat des Objektiven naturalisiert. "

2025-02-07 17:07

Tags: fortification, urbanism, class
Author, Title: Hans-Peter Baertschi_Industrialisierung, Eisenbahnschlachten und Mietskasernenbau

"Die Kapitalisierung des privaten Grundbesitzes kommt zusammen mit dem Entzug der Allmendrechte bei vielen Kleinbauern und Kleinbürgern einer Enteignung gleich ( ... ) Die Folge der erstmals 1799 und dann endgültig nach 1832 von den Liberalen durchgesetzten freien Verfügbarkeit über den Boden24 ist eine zunehmende Entwurzelung von Kleinbauern, Heimarbeitern und Handwerkern. Diese bilden eine Reservearmee billiger Arbeitskräfte für die Industrialisierung. Nach Karl Marx fÜhrt dieser historische Scheidungsprozess zur 'ursprünglichen Akkumulation'. Die Grundrente bildet von nun an neben den alten Formen des Wucher- und Handelskapitals eine wesentliche neue Form der nichtproduktiven Kapitalakkumulation."

2025-02-07 12:10

Tags: global, fortification, politics, urbanism
Author, Title: Wolfgang Scheppe_Die Architektur als Verdinglichung

"Es war Ruskin, der als erster ein zunächst ästhetisches Phänomen als Ausruck von Politik und Öknomie begriff. Er tat dies im Zusammenhang mit dem Übergang der gotischen Architektur zum steinernen Herrschaftsgestus der Renaissance in Venedig. Der zugrunde liegende Gedanke dabei lautet: Wenn sich abstrakte gesellschaftliche, politische und ökonomische Prinzipien wie z.B das der Arbeitsteilung - vergegenständlichen, dann kann man diese sinnlich wahrnehmen und in ihren Konrektionen erklären. Die Produktionsbedingungen von Raum sind also an ihm selbst ablesbar. Sie sind es nicht zuletzt, weil Territorium, Privateigentum und Recht, mit anderen Worten die Zergliederung von Land in Immobilienbesitz und die politischen Massstäbe einer Gesellschaft, die ordnen, wie dies zu geschehen hat, begrifflich zusammenhängen. Dies zeigt sich bereits in der Mehrdeutigkeit des griechischen Wortes Nomos, das sowohl Gesetz als auch Bezirk bedeutet und sich vom Verb "für Weideland" abstecken ableitet. Der Zusammenhang zwischen Grenze und Ausschluss als Konstitutionsbedingung des Raums unter den Prämissen einer herrschenden Ökonomie bestimmen auch den Charakter der globalisierten Stadt."

2025-02-07 11:11

Tags: [[03_tags/ensemble|03_tags/ensemble]] , speculation, legislation, stadtbild, city
Author, Title: Wolfgang Scheppe_Die Legislative Erfindung des Stadtbildes

"Erst die zunächst im Zuge einer Rechtsprechung verfügte Anschauung als Ambiance gibt dieser scheinbaren städtebaulichen Geschlossenheit festen piktorialen Gehalt. Bemerkenswert ist dabei, dass dieser Aspekt gleichzeitig mit einem ihm gemässigten Standpunkt in die Welt trat - dem der industriell betriebenen Immobilienspekulation. Erstmals machte sich das Kalkühl des Grundeigentums als unbeschränktes Prinzip städtischen Wachstums geltend. Weil diese Entwicklung zugleich staatliche Anerkennung erfuhr, Spekulationen unter dem legislativen Begriff des Schutzes eine die Physiognomie des Urbanen für immer verändernde Aneignung betreiben."

2025-02-15 10:49

Tags: monument, inventory, devaluation
Author, Title: Marc Amery_Le Monument Classé, Alibi du Monument non classé

“Plus qu’une question, il s’agit d’une constatation doublée d’une interrogation: le monument classé est virtuellement un alibi pour permettre la destruction de ce qui n’est pas classé, et ce fait doit provoquer notre interrogation. Au risque de ne pas classer correspond le risque de classer, car l’édifice qui va pouvoir servir d’alibi sera soigné et restauré tant et si bien qu’il ne sera plus lui-même. Quant au monument non classé, statistiquement il sera détruit, à moins qu’il ne soit situé dans une zone protégée qui, espérons-le, ne soit pas à son tour prise comme un alibi.”

2025-02-07 11:24

Tags: expansion, urbanism, capitalism, rural
Author, Title: Christian Schmid_Zur Kritik der Stadtentwicklung

"Die mittelalterliche Stadt-Idylle wie die idealisierte “Stadtkultur” entfalten erst vor dem Hintergrund der weltumspannenden Urbanisierung ihre eigentliche gesellschaftliche Funktion: Unter dem Schleier der Stadt-Ideologie wird einerseits das Ausmass der durch die Urbanisierung ausgelösten Veränderungen verborgen, womit gleichzeitig die bestehenden Herrschaftsverhältnisse legitimiert werden. Andererseits kann der Urbanisierungsprozess ungehindert vorangetrieben werden, weil seine Auswirkungen und wahren Dimensionen kaum erkennbar sind und nur langsam durch die dicken Sedimentschichten der Ideologie zum Permafrost des öffentlichen Bewusstseins durchsickern."

2025-02-10 12:05

Tags: museum, memory, global
Author, Title: Kasper Laegring_The politics of the plinth

"Corinne Fournier (2005) has argued that the modern disciplinary city — Vienna, Barcelona, Paris — came into being through the threefold strategy of, firstly, the creation of vast, uniform spaces for transportation and commerce; secondly, the revivalist and eclectic use of historical styles; and lastly, the strive toward a transparent architecture. All of these aspects were active in shaping a new urban visual culture, parts
of which live on until the present day. As Fournier explains, the strategic and spectacular use of stylistic
motifs from ossified cultures performed a necessary compensatory and reassuring cultural function in a city whose citizens were facing constant, massive changes in financial security, technological innovation, ways of living, and speed of perception. As many perceptive
cultural critics of the era witnessed, the intensification of historicism masked the instability and flux of the new urban lifeworld. Hence the ‘museum city’ model came to the rescue."

2025-02-15 10:06

Tags: nationalism, museum, heritage, consumption
Author, Title: David Harvey_The History of Heritage

“The museum, together with the expansion of archaeological and historical societies, may have held ideals of democratizing heritage through making the consumption of heritage resources more open, but access to and choices over the production and formal interpretation of this resource remained in the hands of the few.”

2025-02-07 11:33

Tags: idealisation, heimat, heritage, strategy, archive
Author, Title: David Harvey_The History of Heritage

"The institution that seems to bring all of these essentially nineteenth-century facets together is the National Trust (see Murphy, 2002; Newby, 1995; Weideger, 1994). Founded along campaigning lines in 1895 by Octavia Hill, Robert Hunter and Hardwicke Rawnsley, the Trust sought social change but was also wholly embedded within educated, privileged and influential circles. It had strong connections to a range of enlightened aristocrats, a unique relationship with the state (the Trust is constituted through a series of National Trust Acts, 1907–71) and a concern for popularizing a purposively ‘national’ heritage agenda. Although originally more interested in open landscapes and medieval buildings, the National Trust became increasingly involved in the maintenance and preservation of country houses and gardens, largely through laws of inheritance tax and the opportunism of James Lees-Milne (the Secretary of the National Trust’s Country House Commi ee, 193650). From its nadir in the 1930s and 1940s, the country house has transformed into being a public symbol of national pride (Mandler, 1997), and the National Trust was very much at the forefront of this process. ‘The great houses of England were brought into “public” ownership by confident delegation, by mild nepotism, … this was the old boy network’s finest hour; their noblest nationalization’ (The Times, quoted in Lowenthal, 1998, 65). In terms of our wider themes in the history of heritage, the work of the National Trust appears to extend the campaigning elements of Ruskin and Morris. However, it directs its efforts not at social revolution, but at meeting and manipulating a public appetite for the ‘olden-time’. A carefully mediated past needs to be revered and conserved for the good of the nation, and an ideal (or veneer) of continuity – whether in physical presence or in terms of genetic lineage – should be adhered to (Wright, 1985). The achievement of this carefully mediated heritage product, however, has o en meant that some bits have had to be le out of the narrative – elided, covered over or simply destroyed – while what exists appears to support a conservative and backward-looking agenda of nostalgia that is a long way from the ideals of its founders."

2025-02-05 15:52

Tags: historic_city_center, wrongdoing, neglect
Author, Title: Melchior Fischli_Geplante Altstadt

"Durchwegs lehnte man die baulichen Zeitschichten des 19.Jahrhunderts ab, was sich bei Steiner etwa in der Feststellung äusserte, dass die Altstadt «bis anfangs des 19. Jahrhunderts ein gesunder und lebensfähiger Organismus» gewesen sei. In der Ausstellung im Helmhaus von 1948 versammelte eine Schauwand «Schlechte Beispiele», die an der Architektur des 19. Jahrhunderts «Falsche Anpassung», «Schlechte Einfügung» und «Zerstörung des Masstabes» demonstrieren sollten"

2025-02-13 16:28

Tags: place, subjectivity, quasi-object
Author, Title: Kari Jormakka_Heimlich Manoeuvres

"Insofar as place is not the objective receptacle of ritual but one of its effects, it seems possible to recreate the same place in different physical sites, to make copies of the locus. "

2025-02-07 10:40

Tags: education, entertainment, idealisation, popular_memory, tactics, picturesque
Author, Title: Raphael Samuel_Theatres of Memory

"Whatever the reasons, history and heritage are typically placed in opposite camps. The first is assigned to the realm of critical inquiry, the second to a merely antiquarian preoccupation, the classification and hoarding of things. The first, so the argument runs, is dynamic and concerned with development and change; the second is static. The first is concerned with explanation, bringing a sceptical intelligence to bear on the complexities and contradictoriness of the record; the second sentimentalizes, and is content merely to celebrate. (vgl. Twinhood of Avantgarde and Kitsch) If the parable of the motes and beams were followed, as it should be, few of the historians practices would emerge unscathed. Are we not guilty ourselves of turning knowledge into an object of desire? And is it not the effect, if not the intention, of our activity as historians to domesticate the past and rob it of its terrors by bringing it within the realm of the knowable? Historians are no less concerned than conservationists to make their subjects imaginatively appealing. We may not prettify the past in the manner of English Heritage or the National Trust, but we are no less adept than conservation officers and museum curators at tying up loose ends and removing unsightly excrescences. We use vivid detail and thick description to offer images far clearer than any reality could be. Do we not require of our readers, when facing them with one of our periods reconstructions, as willing a suspension of disbelief as the living history spectacle of the open air museum or theme park. Is not the historical monograph, after its fashion, as much a packaging of the past as costume drama? And do we not call on our own trompe-loil devices to induce a hallucinatory sense of oneness with the past, using evocative detail as a gauge of authenticity? The perceived opposition between education and entertainment, and the unspoken and unargued for assumptions that pleasure is almost by definition mindless, ought not to go unchallenged. There is no reason to think that people are more passive when looking at old photocraphs or film footage, handling a museum exhibit, following a local history trail, or even buying a historical souvenir, than when reading a book. People do not simply consume images in the way in which, say, they buy a bar of chocolate. As in any reading they assimilate them as best they can to pre-existing images and narratives. The pleasures of the gaze, scopophilia as it is disparagingly called - are different in kind from those of the written word but not necessarily less taxing on historical reflection and thought. "

2025-02-05 16:45

Tags: reality, stadtbild, image, construction, history, idealisation, commercial, heimat, home
Author, Title: Sigrid Brandt and Hans-Rudolf Meier_Stadtbild und Denkmalpflege

"Auf den ersten Blick lenken die populären Stadtbilder von dieser Wirklichkeit ab. Sie bedienen Wünsche und Sehnsüchte, die im Alltag keine Gültigkeit mehr haben, sind gebaute Träume von Geschichte. Gerade deswegen sind Stadtbilder so popular. Sie verweisen auf ein gesellschaftliches Defizit, den Verlust an Behaustsein. Infolgedessen nimmt auch niemand Anstoss daran, dass die populären Stadtbilder nur Ausschnitte aus einem grösseren Ganzen darstellen, bewusst Akzente setzen, Idealisierungen beinhalten. Mehr doch: Es stört such nur wenige, dass Stadtbilder nicht echt sind, dass sie, um nochmals mit Georg Dehio zu sprechen, "Täuschungen" sind. Das gilt in zweifacher Hinsicht: Nicht nur versprechen die kleinteiligen Fassaden oft anderes als die Innenräume halten, auch die bildhaften Assoziation von Gemeinschaftlichekeit und Harmonie verblasst vor der Realität nüchterener kommerzieller Strategien."

2025-02-13 15:38

Tags: place, subjectivity, politics
Author, Title: Manfredo Tafuri_The Sphere and the Labyrinth

"What must be made clear from the start is that all this breaking up, distorting, multiplying, and disarranging, apart from the emotional reactions it can elicit, is nothing more than a systematic criticism of the concept of place, carried out by using the instruments of visual communi­cation. It has already been pointed out that, as far back as the perspective compositions of the Prima parte di architetture e prospettive (First Part of Architectures and Perspectives) (1743), Piranesi presents organisms that pretend to have a centrality but that never achieve one. In plate X of that collection, the elliptical courtyard, which seems to constitute the focus of the organism, is seen, in the reconstruction of the plan, to be deliberately inserted as a spiral into the continuum of the columns; while in the "an­ cient temple invented and designed in the manner of those which were built in honor of the goddess Vesta," the outer circle winding around the Pantheon, the directrix of the stairway, arid the Corinthian colonnade prove to be off-center in relation to one another and dislocated onto inde­ pendent rings."

2025-02-15 10:25

Tags: nationalism, representation, fetish
Author, Title: Wolfgang Scheppe_Die Architektur als Verdinglichung

“Die Moderne Denkmalpflege entsteht in der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts: die Güter der Vergangenheit sollen im Interesse nationalen Bewusstseins geschützt werden. Sie werden zu Fetischen der Ideologie des Nationalstaates. 1897 fordert Eduard Paulus, man solle in der Beschreibung der deutschen Kunstlandschaften Monumentales gross hervorheben und breit schildern, Minderwertige aber in den Hintergrund treten lassen. Ein anderer Inventarisator des 19. Jahrhunderts, R.Bergau, meint 1885, praktische Brauchbarkeit von historischen Bauwerken solle bei der Bestandesaufnahme nicht berücksichtig werden. Der Ausgangspunkt ist folgenreich - bis heute: er verhindert weiterhin immer noch die Erhaltung von Stadtvierteln “kleiner Leute”. Diese Viertel haben keine oder nur geringe Statusrepräsentation visueller Art; daher erscheinen ihre Fassaden ärmlich -- im Vergleich zu Patrizierhäuser oder Adelsschlössern.”

2025-02-07 11:31

Tags: strategy, urbanism, class
Author, Title: Christian Schmid_Zur Kritik der Stadtentwicklung

"Eine umfassendere, wenn auch kaum weniger nebulöse Vorstellung vom weiteren Verlauf der Urbanisierung hat der Grossvater der kritischen Stadtforschung, der französische Philosoph Henri Lerebvre: Die Urbanisierung finde ihre eigentliche Vollendung in der urbanen Revolution, in der Zerschlagung der ökonomischen wie ideologischen Zwänge des quantitativen Wachstums. Erst wenn das neue revolutionäre Subjekt nicht mehr nur gegen die Ausbeutung seiner Arbeitskraft, sondern gegen die umfassende Vernichtung seiner Natur kämpfe, könne der Lebensraum, als Utopie des Urbanen, wieder zum lebendigen Gebrauchswert werden. Denn das Urbane könne nur entstehen, wenn die staatliche Ordnung und die Strategie, die den Raum global organisiert und homogenisiert, gestürzt würden."

2025-02-10 12:10

Tags: infrastructure, urbanism, duality
Author, Title: Raimund Rodewald_Sehnsucht Landschaft

"Die Benutzung von Flussräumen und anderen Wasserflächen für die Erstellung von Infrastrukturanlagen, wie z.B. der Bau der Sihlhochstrasse im Flussbett der Sihl, ist keine Neuerfindung der Autobahnplaner, sondern hat in Zürich Tradition: Zwischen Bellevue und Rathausbrücke
entsteht 1835 auf Kosten der Limmat das Limmatquai, das 1859 bis zum Central verlängert und 1887 auf eine einheitliche Breite ausgebaut wird. Der Fröschengraben, der als Teil der mittelalterlichen Befestigungsanlage still vor sich hindämmert, wird 1865 aufgefüllt und zur Bahnhofstrasse, heute eine der teuersten Stadtachsen der Welt, umfunktioniert."

2025-02-07 14:42

Tags: manet, kitsch, mundane, stadtbild
Author, Title: Manfredo Tafuri_Die Stadt als zersprengte Ordnung

"Aber um es noch einmal zu sagen, wie sich in dem Kritizismus des Pittoresken der englischen Aufklärung und dem heroischen Utopismus der Architekten der französische Aufklärung die Grundlinien der heutigen Kunstentwicklung abzeichnen, so führt die immer deutlichere Bezugnahme der Bildenden Kunst und der avantgardistischen Literatur auf die Alltagserfahrung des Phänomens Stadt zu neuen Fragen, auf die die Stadt kohärende Antworten geben muss. Der Sinn des Chaos, des Unorganischen, des Veränderlichen und des Kitsch: das ist die Frage, die das F111 von Rosenquist, die bedrohlichen Symbole Oldenburgs oder die filmische Gegenständlichkeit von Vivre sa vie oder Made in USA mit Nachdruck stellen: und es ist nicht die Aufgabe dieser Werke, ein problem zu lösen, das ein spezifisches Problem der Realität der Stadt ist. "

2025-02-09 12:12

Tags: quasi-object, society, monument
Author, Title: Michel Serres_The Parasite

“A ball is not an ordinary object, for it is what it is only if a subject holds it. Over there, on the ground, it is nothing; it is stupid; it has no meaning, no function, and no value. Ball isn’t played alone. Those who do, those who hog the ball, are bad players and are soon excluded from the game. They are said to be selfish. The collective game doesn’t need persons, people out for themselves. Let us consider the one who holds it. If he makes it move around him, he is awkward, a bad player. The ball isn’t there for the body; the exact contrary is true: the body is the object of the ball; the subject moves around this sun. Skill with the ball is recognized in the player who follows the ball and serves it instead of making it follow him and using it. It is the subject of the body, subject of bodies, and like a subject of subjects. Playing is nothing else but making oneself the attribute of the ball as a substance. The laws are written for it, defined relative to it, and we bend to these laws. Skill with the ball supposes a Ptolemaic revolution of which few theoreticians are capable, since they are accustomed to being subjects in a Copernican world where objects are slaves.“

2025-02-20 14:13

Tags: market, trade, bridge, rathausbrücke, zurich, historic_city_center, urbanism, medieval, fortification
Author, Title: Barbara Franzen and Andreas Zgraggen_An der Fluchgasse

"Als eine der Hauptverkehrsachsen war die Marktgasse für Zürichs Stadtentwicklung seit frühester Zeit von grosses Bedeutung. Sie beginnt dort wo sich der See zur Limmat verengt, geeignet für einen ersten Brückenschlag über den Fluss. Im späten Mittelalter konzentrierten sich in diesem Bereich links und rechts der Limmat die wichtigsten sakralen und politischen, gesellschaftlichen und wirtschaftlichen Bauten der Stadt: die Kirchen St. Peter, Fraumünster und Grossmünster, das Rathaus, die Metzg und das Gesellschaftshaus "zum Schneggen" sowie eine Reihe von Zunfthäsuern, Gasthöfen und Trinkstuben. Verbindungsglied war die Rathausbrücke, wo der Zoll erhoben wurde. Im Unterschied zu anderen Städten gab es einen zentralen Marktplatz. Das Kaufen und Verkaufen fand beinahe überall statt, auf Plätzen und in Gassen, bis hinauf zu Rindermarkt und Neumarkt. Sogar auf der Brücke wurde gehandelt. Doch das eigentliche Wirtschaftszentrum war die Marktgasse, und wie im Mittelalter üblich, war der Markt die Drehscheibe des städtischen Lebens. Hier traf man sich, hier wurde gehandelt und gefeilscht, geschwatzt und politisiert, hier sass man in den Tavernen und vergnügte sich. Und hier stand auch der Pranger und, am Fischmarkt, eine Hinrichtungsstätte, wo der Richter die armen Sünder ihrem Schicksal zuführte."

2025-02-05 16:40

Tags: protection, consumption, landscape, city, picturesque
Author, Title: Laurajane Smith_Uses of Heritage

"The Romantic Movement also found expression in the conservation of ‘natural’ heritage. The idea of a ‘pristine wilderness’, and the nature/culture divide facilitated by Enlightenment philosophy, led to the concept of a natural landscape that needed to be protected from the depredations of human activities (Head 2000b; Waterton 2005a). This idea of landscape was institutionalized in the late nineteenth century with the creation of Yellowstone National Park in 1872, the world’s first national park. In England, the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty was founded in 1895 to address threats to the landscape of the Lake District."

2025-02-05 16:06

Tags: class, education, picturesque, nationalism
Author, Title: Laurajane Smith_Uses of Heritage

"Romanticism, as a reaction to urbanization and industrialization, harkened back to a time of the ‘rural idyll’ and it was thus no accident that many of the 20THE DISCOURSE OF HERITAGE buildings that most concerned the SPAB were churches and homes of the rural elite. The idea that architectural monuments were also something that could principally be appreciated by the educated is also embedded in this conservation philosophy – as it was the professional whose responsibility it was to care for and pass on the aesthetic values that lie at the heart of what it meant to be a ‘Modern European’. More specifically, it was only the welleducated who had the necessary cultural literacy to understand grand social and national narratives that were inherent in the fabric of such monuments."

2025-02-15 12:28

Tags: stadtbild, image, aesthetic, urbanism, city_planning
Author, Title: Jane Jacobs_Edge of Empire

“This recourse to the notion of urban hierarchy is a common feature of townscape rhetoric. It is presented as a benign ordering which provides visual diversity, a type of grammar necessary for the correct comprehension of urban form. However, the townscape concept is, like any other form of landscape idea, a social construction which naturalises the operations of power. In his view townscape hierarchy is common sense since ‘civilized life is made more pleasurable by a shared understanding of simple rules of conduct’. Here one senses a nostalgia that extends beyond the heritage value of the built form, to a social and moral order once more surely held by the nation and reminiscently embodied in this symbolic site of empire.”
“Townscape as an approach to planning was initially developed and promoted by the editor of the British periodical Architectural Review, Hubert de Cronin Hastings. He campaigned for a ‘visual policy’ of urban landscape, drawing on the eighteenth-century rural picturesque, which, in his view, was ‘that landscaping tradition to which England owes its most personal aesthetic character’. The townscape concept was later given broader planning popularity through the writings of Gordon Cullen, one of the regular writers for the Review, who published a formal set of townscape principles. For Hastings, the English city was characterised by its ‘infinite variety’ and it was the task of planning to embolden ‘irregularly’ and ‘disdain formality’. Hastings saw the responsibility of the planner to be the enhancement of inherited, ‘natural’, visual disorder—a state he dubbed ‘“sharawaggi”, after an “East Asian” term for irregular gardening’. This was an argument for the improvement of a ‘scene according to the manner suggested by itself, a notion of development based on the genius loci of place, the intrinsic, indigenous qualities of the local.”

2025-02-05 15:22

Tags: kitsch, reproduction
Author, Title: Aysergül Ergül_Walter Benjamin and Kitsch Politics in the Phantasmagorical Age

"On the basis of these etymological roots, three groups of criteria, qualifying what
kitsch is, are identified. The first set posits kitsch as having the features of “simple
producibility” (e.g., bibelots), “simple re-producibility” (e.g., posters), and “stereotyping
and clichés” (e.g., painting of a crying child) (Dorfles 1969; Ćelebonović 1969;
Greenberg 1961; Macdonald 1983). All three of these features depict kitsch as a qualifier
for a cultural and/or artistic object, which is thus seen as aesthetically inadequate. This
aesthetic inadequacy is associated with the rise of mass society where the capacity of
both production and consumption of cultural and artistic objects increased as a result of
technological reproduction.
The second group of criteria describes kitsch as “error in space” (e.g., products of
the music industry being presented as folk music), “error in time” (e.g., old styles being
presented as fashionable), and “error in content” (e.g., the use of clichés, which produce
ready feelings) (Calinescu 1987; Olalquiaga 2002; Dorfles 1969). In this group, the word
“error” is used to demonstrate the centrality of the category of “falsehood” in understanding kitsch."
The third group of criteria is offered by Gillo Dorfles. He identifies seven features that could be used to identify whether an object, attitude, technique is kitsch or not: a) a mass production of works of art (e.g., re-prints of Dali’s paintings); b) ascribing a ritual value to persons or events (e.g., 9/11); c) transferring of one medium to another (e.g., the conversion of novel into cinema); d) a transformation of appearance of something’s original form in a completely different form (e.g., Bismarck as a beer-mug); e) a usable manipulation of dimension (e.g., an oversized glass); and f) an imitation of the past (e.g., new figures in the style of, for instance, the 19th century) (Dorfles 1969).

2025-02-07 11:22

Tags: protection, consumption, class, city, idealisation
Author, Title: Christian Schmid_Zur Kritik der Stadtentwicklung

"Wird das Bild der mittelalterlichen Stadt oder die vielbeschworene “Stadtkultur” zur Erklärungg/Begründung des Urbanisierungsprozesses herangezogen, so werden die gegenwärtigen
gesellschaftlichen Entwicklungen verschleiert und deshalb gar nicht oder falsch verstanden: Die “Stadt” verkommt zu einer Leerformel, die über beliebige Problemkomplexe gestülpt werden
kann, und die schliesslich alles und nichts erklärt. Auf diese Weise lassen sich die “städtischen Probleme” allerdings in einen einfachen Erklärungszusammenhang einbetten, der die negativen Folgeerscheinungen einer ungehemmten Entwicklung aus den “natürlichen” Schwierigkeiten des menschlichen Zusammenlebens herleitet ..."

2025-02-13 16:03

Tags: quasi-object, mundane, preservation
Author, Title: Laurajane Smith_Uses of Heritage

" What this tells us is that it is the utility of a place or artefact in invoking, signifying or otherwise connecting with people’s wider social experiences, memories and knowledge that is important, and what determines if it becomes used as a place or object of heritage, rather than any innate quality."

2025-02-05 15:44

Tags: platzwand, image, value,
Author, Title: Melchior Fischli_Geplante Altstadt

"Dieser Auffassung pflichtete die Heimatschutzkommission bei, wenn sie meinte, dass nicht etwa die Substanz der "Platzwände" erhaltenswert sei:«Für sich allein gesehen sind wenige dieser Bauten schutzwürdig. Unstreitig ist aber das Bild schutzwürdig, das sie in ihrer Gesamtheit und der Münsterhof als Ganzes bieten.» Auch für die Bauzeitung ging es um den Ersatz «architektonisch belangloser alter Häuser, die aber als Bestandteile der Platzwand des Münsterhofes umso wichtiger sind, als dieser Platz eines der markantesten Gebilde der Zürcher Altstadt ist».

2025-02-05 17:01

Tags: village, heimat, rural, representation, switzerland, historic_city_center
Author, Title: Stanislaus von Moos_Erste Hilfe

"Bereits im Vorfeld der Schweizerischen Landesausstellung 1939 scheint Zürich seine zweite Natur als "Dorf" entdeckt zu haben. Damals war es nicht zuletzt darum gegangen, die Stadt als Bühne eidgenössischen Volkstums einzurichten. Der Wollenhof als Sitz des Schweizerischen Heimatschutzes wurde so zum eigentlichen städtebaulichen Requisit von Zürichs Anspruch, als Mittelpunkt der bäuerlichen Schweiz wahrgenommen zu warden. Mit weithin sichtbaren vaterländischen Wandmalereien geschmückt, präsentiert sich die Häusergruppe seit der "Landi" als Brückenkopf an der Rudolf-Brun-Brücke: ein unzweideutiges Zeugnis des Willens, der knapp zwanzig Jahre früher durch die Gull'schen Amtshäuser repräsentierten und dann auf der Strecke gebliebenen Umwandlung Zürichs zur "Grossstadt" den Riegel vorzuschieben. Der später erfolgte Bau des grössten Parkhauses der Zürcher Innenstadt hat die Situation dann endgültig zementiert."

2025-02-13 16:29

Tags: place, ritual
Author, Title: Kari Jormakka_Heimlich Manoeuvres

"The word place does not originally mean a limited area, like a temenos or templum, but goes back to the latin platea, broad street, main street, and the Greek plateia, street, itself derived from plateia hodos, broad way or road. Only the road which is not a physical place can become a selfsame ritual place. "

2025-02-28 10:44

Tags: capitalism, global, [[Townscape|Townscape]], politics, heritage
Author, Title: Jane Jacobs_Edge of Empire

"This book moves self-consciously towards a cultural politics of place as opposed to a reading of a textualised landscape (see Duncan 1990; Barnes and Duncan 1992; Duncan and Ley 1993). I make this distinction explicit because of a concern with the problematic of a textual conceptualisation of space both in terms of the intersection of identity and place and the obligations of a postcolonial political agenda. In their most narrow conceptualisation, textualised readings over-privilege the built form and the visioned urban plan, which are themselves a mark of power, ‘a material manifestation of dominant interests’ (Gottdiener 1986:214–215). The material artefacts, the built forms, of cities are in many senses the displaced ‘main attractions’ of my urban journeyings. I am more concerned with the complicated politics of the production of urban space, than the object produced. Struggles about how an urban space is to be used and how it is to look often go on for years—capturing public resources, mobilising disparate groups into political action and generating one vision after the other. This protracted politics of production is in itself a social and material formation which has effects which not only precede but reach well beyond the space under contest. Often then the ‘exemplary object’ of these studies is not that which is but that which is not yet. In such contexts it is not the ‘object’ which is the thing to be ‘read’ but ‘change itself (Morris 1990:12)."

2025-02-05 16:36

Tags: tradition, eternal, fleeting, present, future
Author, Title: David Harvey_Paris, Capital of Modernity

“Tradition has to be overthrown, violently if necessary, in order to grapple with the present and create the future. But the loss of tradition wrenches away the sheet anchors of our understanding and leaves us drifting, powerless. The aim of the artists, he wrote in 1860, must therefore be to understand the modern as “the transient, the fleeting, the contingent” in relation to that other half of art which deals in “the eternal and immovable.” The fear, he says, in a passage that echoes Flaubert’s dilemma, is “of not going fast enough, of letting the spectre escape before the synthesis has been extracted and taken possession of.”But all that rush leaves behind a great deal of human wreckage. The “thousand uprooted lives” cannot be ignored. There is an eloquent evocation of this in his story of “The Olympia”.”

2025-02-09 11:23

Tags: history, document, monument, archive, archaeology
Author, Title: Michel Foucault_The Archaeology of Knowledge
Category: #methodology

"To be brief, then, let us say that history, in its traditional form, under­ took to 'memorize' the monuments of the past, transform them into documents, and lend speech to those traces which, in themselves, are often not verbal, or which say in silence something other than what they actually say; in our time, history is that which transforms documents into monu­ments. In that area where, in the past, history deciphered the traces left by men, it now deploys a mass of elements that have to be grouped, made relevant, placed in relation to one another to form totalities. There was a time when archaeology, as a discipline devoted to silent monuments, inert traces, objects without context, and things left by the past, aspired to the condition of history, and attained meaning only through the restitu­tion of a historical discourse; it might be said, to play on words a little, that in our time history aspires to the condition of archaeology, to the intrinsic description of the monument."

--> The passage describes a shift in the role of history from memorizing monuments of the past and transforming them into documents, to transforming documents into monuments. Traditional history sought to "lend speech to those traces which, in themselves, are often not verbal". Contemporary history, however, deploys a "mass of elements that have to be grouped, made relevant, placed in relation to one another to form totalities"

--> basically, contemporary history seeks to create an unambiguous whole in monuments, whereas traditional history attempted to decipher traces, even if they are ambiguous and fragmented

creating meaning (contemporary history) vs making sense (traditional history)

2025-02-13 15:40

Tags: stadtbild, preservation, idealisation, urbanism
Author, Title:

"Consider that historic districts did not exist before preservationists conceptualized them as a new type of worthy object. This was not easy. It required the efforts of many preservationists experimenting with new theories and practices, over decades, to establish these now commonplace districts. It required such late 19th-century intellectual advances as Aloïs Riegl’s notion of the unintentional monument, which put cultural significance on par with artistic achievement; Camillo Sitte’s theory that surrounding buildings are integral to monuments; and Reinhard Baumeister’s invention of zoning. In practice, the incorporation of modern infrastructure into old cities, combined with late 19th-century nationalist revivals, led to historic beautification projects in cities including Brussels, Barcelona, and Bologna — to pick only those starting with the letter B."

2025-02-05 17:00

Tags: intangible, value, memory, representation
Author, Title: Laurajane Smith_Uses of Heritage

"It is my task here to not only marry these two concepts of heritage together, so that ‘intangible heritage’ becomes simply ‘heritage’, but also to redefine all heritage as inherently intangible in the f irst place. That is, what is actually the subject of management and conservation/preservation practices, and what visitors and tourists engage with at heritage places, are the values and meanings that are symbolized or represented at and by these heritage sites or cultural practices. Whether we are dealing with traditional definitions of ‘tangible’ or ‘intangible’ representations of heritage, we are actually engaging with a set of values and meanings, including such elements as emotion, memory and cultural knowledge and experiences. It is value and meaning that is the real subject of heritage preservation and management processes, and as such all heritage is ‘intangible’ whether these values or meanings are symbolized by a physical site, place, landscape or other physical representation, or are represented within the performances of languages, dance, oral histories or other forms of ‘intangible heritage’."

2025-02-28 10:16

Tags: expansion, consumption, value, ideology
Author, Title: Jane Jacobs_Edge of Empire

"The ‘edge’ of the title Edge of Empire evokes not a literal edge, the periphery, but what bell hooks (1991:149) describes as a ‘profound edge’, the ‘unsafe’ margin which marks not only a space of openness but also the very negotiation of space itself."

The concept of vandalisme designated the destruction of public objects and monuments by revolutionaries. The word “vandalism” comes from the Vandals, an East German tribe that pillaged Rome during the Sack of 455. It was as a reaction to such destruction that the notion of national heritage was born. Patriotism and the French term for “heritage”, patrimoine, share the same root. It is pater, father: he who commands. But what are the stories told by our heritage?

Palais de Tokyo - Vandalisme, 2024

2025-02-07 11:28

Tags: urbanism, denkmalpflege, [[03_tags/heimatschutz|03_tags/heimatschutz]], historic_city_center, duality
Author, Title: Christian Schmid_Zur Kritik der Stadtentwicklung

"Im kulturellen Bereich sind die Ideologie von der “repräsentativen Wohnung in der Stadt”
und die Ideologie vom “eigenen Häuschen auf dem Land” nur zwei Seiten der gleichen Medaille der Stadt-Land-Ideologie. Dabei ist weder die Stadt “städtisch” noch das Land “ländlich” sondern beides urban. Altstadtsanierung und Denkmalschutz verschleiern ideologisch die Tatsache, dass sich das “Millionenzüri” nicht bruchlos und organisch aus dem Zürich des Mittelalters entwickelt hat. Der Funktionalist Karl Moser, Erbauer der Universität und des Kunsthauses, hat 1933 vorgeschlagen, das Niederdorf abzubrechen und durch eine Kolonne sauberer Büro-Wohnblocks mit Laden-Sockelgeschossen zu ersetzen. Damit wäre der Ideologie, die mit dem Bild der mittelalterlichen Stadt arbeitet, die wichtigste Grundlage entzogen worden: Die Altstadt nämlich dient der Ideologie als Anknüpfungspunkt in der Realität. Deshalb muss das Niederdorf - wenn auch nur als Kulisse - erhalten bleiben. Deshalb mussten auch die zerbombten Altstädte Deutschlands wieder originalgetreu rekonstruiert werden. Und schliesslich aus dem gleichen Grund beneiden die Leute aus den Vereinigten Staaten die Europäer um ihre historischen Stadtkerne, obwohl den Metropolen Europas ihrem Wesen nach keine andere Bedeutung zukommt als den US-amerikanischen Metropolen."

Tags: restoration, [[03_tags/ensemble|ensemble]], local, place

With the widespread destruction of entire urban landscapes during World War II, the question of reconstruction and restoration gained significant importance. The image of a concentric, harmoniously grown city with a core was given utmost priority in this context. The Venice Charter of 1964 expanded the focus from individual objects that needed protection to entire ensembles. The context in which a building stood was considered as equally valuable as the monument itself.

The chapters were no longer organized nationally, but rather ‘locally,’ meaning they were structured around an individual or institution rather than a nationality. However, the CIAM discourse on the city also changed significantly after World War II: the issue of urban forms and aesthetics resurfaced after being sidelined by the pre-war focus on the ‘functional city,’ which aimed to give the city a more techno-scientific aspect.

The Venice Charter was therefore a crucial link that made the legislative invention of the concept of the “ensemble” possible in the first place. An aesthetic subjectivity of the atmosphere of a surrounding environment was naturalized under this concept of the ensemble, transforming it into an objective criterion. This development culminated in 1972 with the hegemony established by the creation of the World Heritage Sites.

The fourteen points of the manifesto are:

to include both buildings and their surroundings in preservation efforts.
to use all relevant sciences and techniques for conservation.
to preserve monuments as works of art and historical evidence.
to maintain monuments through regular upkeep.
to allow monuments to be used without altering their layout or decoration.
to prevent new construction that disrupts a monument’s setting.
to move monuments only when absolutely necessary.
to remove integral elements only to ensure preservation.
to ensure restoration preserves value, avoiding guesswork.
to use modern techniques when traditional methods fail.
to respect all historical layers, removing only in rare cases.
to make restorations distinguishable from the original.
to allow additions only if they don’t harm the building’s character.
to maintain and present monument sites according to conservation principles.

2025-02-16 13:52

Tags: preservation, transformation, politics, intangible
Author, Title: Sevince Bayrak and Oral Göktas_Ghost Stories

The opposite transformation is preservation. Preservation desires to take the Hero back to his glory days, whereas transformation does not need a Hero, it just needs a story to cultivate.

Title: Die Modernität des Dauerhaften
Author: Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani
Year: 2011
Source:

Tags:

2025-02-05 15:29

Tags: tourist, photograph, image, city
Author, Title: Wolfgang Scheppe_Done.Book

"Why should a city be photographed? What does the tourist photograph, and why? The answer can be seen in the following picture. A circle marks the standpoint from which the first photograph was taken. The tourist in the city takes a photograph meant to identify his idea of this very city. He photographs it because he is keen to reproduce an image that he has brought along with him: his own idea of the city. He does not know that this idea - a piece of neo-gothic imperialism - can be traced back to, and evoke, the concept of another city: Venice."

Title: Fröschengraben
Author: Johann Balthasar Bullinger
Year: 1770
Source: Wikipedia

Tags: zurich, fortification, power,

Title: The SPAB Manifesto
Author: William Morris
Year: 1877
Source:

Tags: romanticism, authenticity

Title: Die Architektur als Verdinglichung
Author: Wolfgang Scheppe
Year: 2011
Source:

Tags: stadtbild, collective_eye, city

Title: Die legislative Erfindung des Stadtbildes
Author: Wolfang Scheppe
Year: 2016
Source: Arch+ 225

Tags: stadtbild, image,

Title: done.book
Author: Wolfgang Scheppe
Year: 2010
Source:

Tags: archive, collector

Title: Wollenhof Zürich
Author: unknown
Year: 1700
Source: Baugeschichtliches Archiv

Tags: zurich, infrastructure, industrialisation

2025-02-06 11:32

Tags: objectivity, aesthetic, ethic, historicism, reproduction
Author, Title: Ryan Roark_The Afterlife of Dying Buildings

"When the Venice Charter—arguably the most prominent conservation and restoration manifesto of the twentieth century—was written up in 1964, its authors acknowledged the multiplicity of buildings even while championing conservation, allowing restoration, and discouraging addition. In their words (and with added emphasis): ‘The valid contributions of all periods to the building of a monument must be respected, since unity of style is not the aim of a restoration. When a building includes the superimposed work of different periods, the revealing of the underlying state can only be justified in exceptional circumstances’. The Venice Charter, although often read as highly conservative, paved the way for contemporary practices of intervention in one other critical way: it made explicit the idea that work carried out on a historic building ‘must be distinct from the original architectural composition and must bear a contemporary stamp’"

Title: Zürcher Reformation Disputation
Author: Heinrich Thomann
Year: 1523
Source: reformation, zurich

Tags: